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China's Crossroads 



By 

ELLIOT L OSGOOD 

Medical Missionary in China 
Author of "Breaking Down Chinese Walls' 



Powell & White 

Cincinnati, O. 



.6* 



Copyright 1922 
Powell & White 



Printed in U. S. A. 

ClAb'80520 
-w\0 \ 



Introduction 

DR. ELLIOTT I. OSGOOD has been in 
Central China for many years and few 
missionaries have lived in more intimate 
touch with the Chinese people than he has. For 
more than fifteen years he has been a medical 
missionary in connection with the hospital at 
Chuchow, Anhwei Province, China, under the 
Board of Disciples of Christ. Living in a dis- 
trict with a population of a million people and 
having the only hospital in that section of China, 
his experience has been most varied and interest- 
ing. Although a medical missionary, he has 
also been an evangelist. His theory has been to 
link up very closely the healing of the body with 
the healing of the soul. From the beginning 
Dr. Osgood has actively entered the social and 
governmental life of his little city and has had a 
remarkable part in the shaping of sentiment and 
ideals for the young Chinese in his section. He 
rendered incomparable aid to his city and his 
people during the revolution and counter revolu- 
tion in China, and by close touch with business 
men and the officials of Chuchow he has been 
able to guide the Chinese in many constructive 
ways. The chapters of this book have grown out 
of his rich experience in dealing with the people. 
Few can interpret the real situation in China 



/ 



better than Dr. Osgood. He has lived so long 
with the people that he, in a real sense, ''thinks" 
Chinese. The readers will be inspired and up- 
lifted by his stories of the application of Chris- 
tianity to real Chinese life. This volume, in a 
way a sequel to his first volume ''Breaking Down 
Chinese Walls," should have a wide reading 
among those who are interested in the welfare 
of new-old China. 

STEPHEN J. COREY. 



Contents 



PAGE 

Introduction 3 

Preface 9 

I. Thinking in Chinese 13 

II. Breaking Down Old Walls 25 

III. The Transition Period in China 40 

IV. The Passing of the Opium Curse 58 

V. The Missionary and the Revolution 72 

VI. The Days Following the Revolution 89 

VII. The Republic's Political Deeds 106 

VIII. The Doctor's Job 125 

IX. Lifting Up Men Who Have Failed 140 

X. The Missionary Doctor and the Chinese Woman 154 

XL Building a Railroad 169 

XIL A Ranch , 184 

XIII. Medical Ministry to the Missionary... 202 

XIV. China's Call to America 216 



Illustrations 

PAGE 

The Christian Hospital at Chuchow Frontispiece 

Shi Kwei Biao 96 

Beginning the Morning Clinic 128 

Athletic Meet of a Chinese College 224 



Preface 

TT^HE eyes of a doctor see, more than any- 
J^ thing else, symptoms of disease in human 
beings with whom he comes in contact. He 
has studied his medical books and sick people 
so long that he becomes accustomed to search- 
ing for symptoms in every man he meets. He 
likewise has learned to see the things which 
cause disease. He has learned to look at a 
building, or a school-book, or a suit of clothes, 
or a street or alley, as a possible disease 
spreader. He is forever on the still hunt to cure 
disease and to eradicate things which cause it. 
His very conversation, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, dwells on healing, operations, pre- 
ventative measures and germs. He longs to 
create a physically human society. 

The missionary doctor in China sees symp- 
toms of disease on nearly every person he meets. 
Trachoma,malaria, skin disease and social dis- 
eases are working their ravages through every 
grade of society; farmer, laborer, soldier, mer- 
chant and scholar. Every disease found in 
modern society is here, and in aggravated form. 
Among these four hundred million people there 
are not a thousand modern trained doctors. 

The missionary doctor is a practical Chris- 
tian worker. He knows that the religions which 



have held sway in China tend to bring weakness 
to the body as well as to the soul. Fear of fate, 
selfishness and sin, ignorance and parasitism, 
are sapping the physical life of the people. Pre- 
ventative medicine must find a way to clean these 
things from Chinese society, just as it must find 
means to clean the dirt from the streets and 
homes. 

In this book we might have devoted space 
to educational, evangelistical and pastoral work. 
We have not done so. Others know those sub- 
jects far better, and we have been so long deal- 
ing with disease and seeking measures to pre- 
vent it, that we could not help but emphasize 
this side of the new life which is springing up in 
China. 

The missionaries have been trying to save 
China, physically, intellectually and spirtually. 
Some emphasize one of these phases more than 
others. Perhaps we have underscored the first. 
They are all found in the human life and bound 
together. We cannot keep them apart. The thing 
which lifts up the spiritual life strengthens the 
physical. We have not found a cure for every 
ill, but we belive with all our hearts that the 
acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior must be the 
foundation for the healing of the people and of 
the nation. 

For twenty years young China has seen in 
America its ideal of a nation. She longs to here 
build up another nation like unto her. Recently 
many Chinese have begun dimly to realize that 



the foundation of America's greatness and power 
is in her faith and trust in God. It is a day of 
tremendous opportunity for America in China, 
so we have been constrained to write these pages 
that you in America may realize this and take up 
the job which God is laying upon you. 

E. I. O. 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 



THINKING IN CHINESE 

A man thinks in a language. The language 
in which he thinks is usually the same one in 
which he makes known his thoughts to others. 
His thinking is colored by the books he reads, 
the community in which he lives and by the 
familiar objects which he daily sees. He thinks 
in terms of the community, the state or nation 
in which he lives and works. If he makes a 
tour of the globe, everything he sees is colored 
by the sights with which his eyes have been 
familiar since childhood. He is comparing every 
new thing with similar conditions in his home 
community or state. He is merely reasoning 
from the known to the unknown. 

When a man goes from the Occident to live 
permanently in the Orient, he finds himself like 
a young tree dug up from its familiar ground and 
transplanted to another soil. For a time he 
seems to cease growing. He is dazed, shocked, 
withered. His whole system, physical, moral 
and spiritual, is affected by the change. He 
finds people talking in a language, living in con- 
ditions and working in ways absolutely contrary 
to his approved ideas of right living. He had 
probably not heretofore conceived that men could 

[13] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

live in such a manner. He cannot get their 
point of view. His whole being is chafed by a 
hundred things which are going on before him. 
At first they pique his curiosity. Some of them 
are tragic; but most of them affect his nerves. 

**Do you know that cook of mine whom I am 
trying to train put garlic in the pie today!" 
cried one woman in despair. 

"That flock of women walked right through 
my house back to the room where I was lying 
down," cried our ranchman in disgust. 

**The guard on that train ran several rods 
after me to give me an umbrella I had carelessly 
left on the train," another said in amazement. 

"I don't see why these people cannot do the 
way I want them," irritably spoke another. 

They cannot understand the ways of the 
Chinese people. They forget that very few of 
this nation are familiar with the ways of foreign 
countries. The new arrival wonders at the 
methods used by the older man. He finds him- 
self criticising those who have been long in the 
country. Why has the old missionary grown so 
careless, so thoughtless, so forgetful of time, so 
discourteous? The older missionary may not 
be guilty of a single one of these things, but it all 
seems so to the newcomer. He marvels that the 
Chinese are not offended over the treat inent they 
are receiving. He would not treat them so. By 
and by the established philosophies which he 
had held so dear begin vanishing into thin 
air. Things become unstable. His religious 

[14] 



THINKING IN CHINESE 

ideas are being broken down to their simplest 
forms. His prayers become appeals. At times 
an appalling feeling of helplessness grips him. 
His prayers seem to rise no higher than the 
ceiling. He has to grip his lifelong faith in God, 
in man, as a drowning man grips a rope, which, 
while saving him is dragging him through 
whirling, terrible waters. 

Slowly the new missionary finds himself. 
There is something in the patient courtesy of the 
Chinese teacher which compels his admiration. 
That teacher daily sits opposite him at the study 
table and initiates him into the mysteries of the 
Chinese language. He has time to study him. 
He finds some orphaned heart in the mission 
school responding to the mother love in some 
teacher. He catches the mission doctor late at 
night coaxing life back into the body of some 
poor neglected piece of humanity. He gathers 
enough of the language to at least make him- 
self understood by his teacher and thoughts at 
length begin to form themselves into Chinese 
setting, into Chinese words. The ground under 
his feet assumes solidity. He begins to see rea- 
son in the hitherto queer customs. Maybe the 
Chinese view is not so illogical after all. The 
homeland is less constant in his thoughts. The 
new land is taking on points of attractive beauty. 
Even the dirty-faced babies are beginning to fas- 
cinate him. 

His roots are slowly gripping the new soil. 
The lure of the Orient is upon him. He finds 

[15] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

himself thinking in the language of the Chinese. 
He may not be able immediately, or in the end, to 
put out of his own life the intense nervous activ- 
ity which characterizes the American. He still 
rushes along the street as though on an errand of 
life or death, dodging around slow-going Chinese. 
He may even be able to put more energy into the 
servants and helpers who gather around him; 
but it does not worry him so much because he 
cannot hustle the entire East. They will hustle 
some time, he thinks, and lets them take their 
time. 

Very likely in the beginning he had spoiled 
one or two servants by giving them a larger wage 
than his fellow workers were paying. He then 
had the chagrin of seeing those servants, like 
spoiled children, puffed up with their own im- 
portance and worthy of being dismissed. Now 
he had sadly to begin training others. It is easy 
for a servant to exaggerate his own usefulness 
when he is promoted too rapidly. Missionaries 
early learn this lesson and so give a wage but a 
little larger than do their Chinese neighbors. A 
common servant usually receives five dollars a 
month from the missionary. A cook may be paid 
nine or ten. A personal teacher receives fifteen. 
Better educated men get from twenty to fifty 
dollars a month. 

These men pay per month from two and a 
half to five dollars for their food. In their own 
homes they live even cheaper. They figure that, 
on an average, a person will eat a little more 

[16] 



THINKING IN CHINESE 

than one pound of rice a day. Vegetables and 
meats are eaten as a relish, not as a major por- 
tion in their meals. Rich people eat more meat 
and less rice, but the poor man lives chiefly on 
the common cereal. Farther north rice is re- 
placed with corn and wheat. A small corn pud- 
ding with fresh dates added to it is delicious on a 
frosty morning. 

Shoes may be bought in their shops but ordi- 
narily the women of the household make them 
for the family. Being made with cloth in form 
similar to our slippers, the soles chiefly of 
pasteboard and waste cloth, strongly quilted with 
hempen twine, these home-made shoes cost but a 
few dimes. The common people, when at work 
or traveling across the country, buy a pair of 
straw sandals for a few cents and carry their 
shoes. For v/et weather they may have a pair of 
hobnailed leather boots. These are kept oiled 
and last for years. In winter time they wear 
heavier socks, line their shoes with cotton or 
sheepskin with the wool still on the skin. 

The poor man wears a cap or hat which can 
be bought for twenty cents or less. His strong 
bamboo and paper-made umbrella does not cost 
over thirty or forty cents. He is careful of his 
clothing and the outer garments may last for 
years. His cotton garments are patched until it 
is difficult to tell the original from that which is 
added. Clothing is worn by the poor until it is 
completely worn out. It may pass down to them 
from the rich and the poor even pass a garment 

[17] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

on to the beggar or poor relative. Then it 
ceases to be a garment and becomes a bundle of 
rags. Finally the rags are gathered up and used 
to reinforce their pasteboard soles, to make 
mops and dishcloths or to be woven into cloth 
sandals or sold to the paper maker. 

There are rich homes in China and there are 
many beggar huts. The rich man's home may 
be elaborately furnished, yet the home of an 
ordinary rich man in China might not be attrac- 
tive to the average American who has not learn- 
ed to "think Chinese." It has one redeeming 
feature. There is usually plenty of fresh air cir- 
culating through it for the doors are always open. 

The poor man's home may have a table and 
chairs. A few wooden benches will sometimes in- 
crease the seating capacity. He usually has one 
or two cooking pots. These fit over a brick stove 
which may or may not have a smoke flue. The 
stove is a simple, cheap structure which uses the 
maximum of heat generated from the burning of 
wild grass. One never sees bonfires in China. 
Every possible part of the tree which can be used 
for lumber is so used. The remainder, twigs, 
branches and leaves are used for fuel. The poor 
man will have sufficient rice bowls to allow one 
for each member of the family. An extra one or 
two hold the vegetables. He uses no tablecloth, 
no napkins, no sheets, no pillow cases, no paja- 
mas. In the winter his own clothing is used for 
extra bedding. If he has two rooms in which to 
live he is fortunate. Sometimes he constructs a 

[18] 



THINKING IN CHINESE 

cheap lean-to for a kitchen, otherwise his stove is 
also in his main room. He probably has a box in 
which he keeps special papers, but he needs no 
strong box for he has no valuables. His bed may 
be constructed out of bamboo or rough lumber, or 
a door laid across a couple of benches serves the 
same purpose. Sometimes he sleeps on the top of 
his table. He may spread a bundle of straw in a 
dry corner and curl up for the night. Such is a 
poor man's home in town. 

Every single member of such a family 
works, — or is a parasite on some one else. They 
know how to save, how to economize so that 
nothing is lost. The children in the spring go 
out and gather greens for vegetables. These cost 
nothing but labor. Some of them travel about 
the streets with a basket of peanuts, selling 
them to passersby. They pick up cast-off sandals 
and carry them home for fuel. In the autumn 
any or all of them shoulder a carrying pole and 
hie them to the hills to gather their winter's fuel. 
At night they come staggering home under their 
heavy loads. 

Such people do not have books nor newspa- 
pers. Few of them can read. They do not go to 
the movies. When a performing monkey, or a 
Punch and Judy show or a travelling circus 
comes to town, the children are to be found in 
the front row. But these are in the open air and 
the showman cannot extract much money. 
Temples get very little money from such people. 
The tax collector, too, gives them a wide berth. 

[19] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

The landlord is careful that they pay down a 
lump sum as a guarantee fund. When they can 
find some little corner of public land, they may 
give the constable a tip, and build their own 
little hut or cottage. Mud walls and thatch roof 
are cheap. Sometimes they find an abandoned 
hut and move in without troubling the constable. 
They do the repairing and act as though they had 
always lived there. Rainy days may find them 
short of grass fuel; then they eat the cold left- 
overs and tighten their belts until the sun shines 
again. They rarely call a doctor, for doctors cost 
money. Some old woman may give them a pre- 
scription, or they may buy a sticky plaster from 
some street vender. These are warranted to cure 
headache, toothache, boils, crick in the 
back, rheumatism, abscesses and sores of all 
kind. When one dies, a very cheap cofRn is 
bought or they may just roll up the body in mat- 
ting and bury it on public land. 

This is living the simple life with deadly 
intensity. It is getting indeed very close to 
nature. To the missionary doctor it seems more 
like dying an unnatural death. The hopeless look 
on more than half of the clinical faces in which 
he daily glances makes him feel all too keenly 
the life and death struggle being enacted before 
his eyes. It is a movie with a hopeless ending. 
"Doctor," they ask, "what must I avoid in my 
eating?" And the doctor exclaims, "Eat every- 
thing you can get; eat everything." 

This is a description of more than two-thirds 
[20] 



THINKING IN CHINESE 

of all Chinese. With such a daily panorama mov- 
ing before him, the missionary doctor learns to 
think, to think intensely in Chinese. He, too, 
learns to save, to economize. He is careful to see 
that waste leaves and grass in his yard are placed 
where poor people can get them. He allows them 
to come in and gather greens. He allows them to 
rake up his dead leaves. He puts the old cloth- 
ing, the scraps of cloth, the old shoes, into the 
hands of some capable Chinese woman and tells 
her to give them where most needed. 

Oft-times when we are cleaning the attic 
and getting rid of the accumulations of years, we 
chide ourselves for having laid away things 
which have been injured by time. Why did we 
not give them to some needy person instead of 
littering up a garret? One time when we were 
leaving for a vacation an old Christian woman 
came hobbling in. She had no property and only 
a distant relative on whom to depend. Her com- 
forts were few, but she was not a beggar and she 
always showed appreciation for anything done to 
make her lot easier. She was a steady attendant 
at the church services. 

'Teacher," she said this time, "Have you an 
old pair of leather shoes which you are going to 
throw away?" We remembered an old pair of 
meii's shoes which we could no longer use and 
turned them over. 

"Oh, these are fine," she exclaimed. "They 
have good soles. Now I can get to church even 
when it is muddy." She will keep those old shoes 

[21] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

oiled. She will stuff a little paper or cloth into 
the toes and make them fit her smaller feet. 
They will last her the rest of her days upon 
earth. They will in fact be a choice possession — 
and we were going to throw them away. 

Is it any wonder that the missionary, after 
living for some years among such people, will 
learn to think in terms of the Chinese? Is it any 
wonder that while on furlough in his homeland 
he will look at things very differently from what 
he did when he went out for the first time? How 
to find solutions for these Oriental problems, how 
to bring life instead of death to these people, how 
to heal their sicknesses and to prevent more sick- 
ness, how to bring prosperity to the many and 
not just to the few, how to lift them up to a plane 
where they will be able to think of other things 
than just food and clothing and shelter, how to 
apply Christianity socially and lift them to a 
height where they can appreciate the spirit of 
Christ; these are the great problems which take 
possession of the soul of the missionary. 

Furlough time comes around and we return 
to the homeland. We look out of the car window 
and see a pile of brush down by the side of the 
stream; or it may be a meadow with cocks of hay. 
Our minds fly back to China and the pile of brush 
and cock of hay become Chinese graves. Are they 
not likewise scattered by the side of the streams 
and over the fields? We see the end of a wooden 
culvert sticking out by the road side. It is surely 
some Chinese coffin from which the elements are 
[22] 



THINKING IN CHINESE 

removing the slight earth covering. We see 
posted on some wall a red poster with a white 
center or a white poster with a blue center. It 
must be the entrance to some Chinese home in 
which some leading member has died within the 
year. One early morning on the train we heard 
a little child prattling to its mother. Our sleepy 
ears were suddenly arrested by a word from the 
child which sounded for all the world like the 
Chinese expression, "foreign devil.'* How many 
times in the past years have we heard it from the 
lips of Chinese children! 

So a missionary on furlough finds himself 
still thinking in Chinese, still seeing with Chi- 
nese eyes, still hearing with Chinese ears. The 
homeland seems to take on a value only in rela- 
tion to the land of his adoption. He sees a group 
of school children come out of their school and 
march down the street, every child carrying an 
American flag. A drum corps leads them. 
These are perhaps the children of immigrant 
parents who were attracted to America's free 
soil. The children are drinking deep at the foun- 
tain of American life. They are singing the 
American national songs and hoisting the Amer- 
ican flag over their school building. The mis- 
sionary's mind again flies back to China and 
again, in spirit, he is watching a line of Chinese 
school children. They are all in white uniforms 
and each one is carrying two flags, that of his 
country with its five strips and the other of our 
own with its beloved stars and stripes. He sees 

[28] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

them again as they marched that day into his 
compound and the compounds of many other 
American missionaries. He again hears them 
singing in honor of the missionary and the 
country which he represents. And the tears 
come once more to his eyes, as they did that day 
in 1912 when he saw the flag of his nation being 
given a place of honor by a backward nation, a 
nation which he has learned to love and for 
whom he is devoting his life energies. 



[24] 



II 

BREAKING DOWN OLD WALLS 

The difference between the China of twenty 
years ago and the China of today is as great as 
the chasm which divides hatred and friendship. 
Only one who has lived through these years of 
change in the Orient can fully realize what has 
taken place. Even to veteran missionaries the 
well nigh impregnable walls of ignorance, pre- 
judice and bigotry which the Chinese people 
had raised up about their nation in the nine- 
teenth century seem but a bad dream which 
has passed. Yet it is now a matter of history 
that Protestant missionary forces were batter- 
ing against those v/alls for a hundred years be- 
fore they fell. What men suffered in those years 
only the old missionaries can tell. Nothing but 
divinely inspired faith in ultimate success gave 
them courage to fight the unequal battle which 
they waged. Over and over again it was a case 
of one man facing a million and two facing ten 
million. But they kept on, and recruits con- 
tinued to increase in numbers, in spite of the 
unyielding attitude of the Chinese people. 

*'A11 things are possible to him that be- 
lieveth," said the Master long ago. "God and 

[25] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

we are bound to be in the majority," the old 
missionaries said, encouraging one another. As 
the missionaries of more recent years have 
watched these old walls finally crumbling to 
pieces, and then have listened to the tales the 
old veterans at times would be led to tell, they 
too have marveled at the steadfast faith with 
which these old soldiers have held on to the 
task. "Now on the Rock they stand who watch 
God's eye, and hold His guiding Hand," said 
Keble. 

"The dawn is not far distant. 

Nor is the night starless — 

Love is eternal! 

God is still God, and 

His word shall not fail us." 

Today the old enmity of the Chinese people 
against foreigners and things foreign is gone. 
Their blind faith in their own institutions and 
their contempt for those of other countries have 
disappeared. We can see that a new China is 
being bom — born in pain and travail, to be sure, 
but one which will take its place as a new nation 
among the great family of nations. 

It must not be forgotten that while through 
the centuries there has been some connection 
by caravan routes, and later water routes, be- 
tween the East and the West, very little of the 
West was brought to the East or of the East to 
the West. China developed her own civilization, 
a civilization that, until the last two centuries, 
[26] 



BREAKING DOWN OLD WALLS 

was in advance of the West. Traders of the 
early centuries had no reason to complain of 
the treatment they received from the Chinese. 
They found the same culture and refinement, 
the same courtesy towards guests from afar 
which once more is manifesting itself. 

The first knowledge of China which came 
to the peoples of Western Asia and those around 
the Mediterranean Sea, was brought in by 
Persian stories and legends. The country was 
called Thina or Sinim. It is probable that 
Isaiah was referring to China when he used the 
old term of Sinim. The Roman people knew the 
land by the name of Seres, the land from which 
came silks. But it was Marco Polo who, through 
publishing the record of a score or more years 
spent in the Orient, made the name of Cathay 
familiar to the European world. 

Marco Polo, with his father and uncle, who 
accompanied him to China, received great 
courtesy at the hands of the Chinese govern- 
ment. He even held the office of prefect of 
Yangchow for a few years. John de Corvino, a 
Roman Catholic missionary, was given imperial 
audience, allowed to build a church with steeple 
and bells and to baptize converts in Peking itself. 
Early Arab and Persian traders used and abused 
these courtesies shown to foreign guests. They 
brought products of the West and offered them 
as presents to the emperors, claiming for them- 
selves the powers of ambassadors from their 
own countries. They received in return presents 

[27] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

which often amounted to far more than the 
value of the goods they had brought. An Oriental 
monarch did not feel that he had maintained 
his dignity and prestige unless his gifts were 
greater than those he received from other coun- 
tries. 

After the compass had been invented and 
perfected, ocean traders discovered the route by 
way of the Cape of Good Hope and quickly pushed 
on to the Orient. Marco Polo's stories of the 
gold and silver, the silks and porcelains of 
Cathay lured them on to gain the riches of that 
far away land for themselves. But their evil 
treatment of the Chinese quickly compelled the 
government to assume an entirely different atti- 
tude towards them from that which it formerly 
held towards those who had come by land. 

Sir John Davis once wrote, "The early con- 
duct of the Portuguese was not calculated to 
impress the Chinese with any favorable idea of 
Europeans; and when, in the course of time, 
they came to be competitors with the Dutch and 
English, the contest of mercantile avarice tended 
to place them all in a still worse point of view. 
To this day the character of the Europeans is 
represented as that of a race of men intent alone 
on the gains of commercial traffic, and regardless 
altogether of the means of attainment." Li 
Hung-chang once said that it was almost im- 
possible to hope for a mutual understanding on 
the question of relationship with the European 
nations; that they (Europeans) viewed all ques- 

[28] 



BREAKING DOWN OLD WALLS 

tions from the commercial standpoint while the 
Chinese considered them from the moral side. 
Colonel Yule, in summing up the early knowl- 
edge other nations had of the Chinese, said, 
*'The people (Chinese) are civilized men, mild, 
just and frugal in temper, eschewing collision 
with their neighbors and even shy of inter- 
course; but not averse to dispose of their prod- 
ucts of which raw silk is the staple." 

Portuguese traders sailed their vessels to 
China and in 1516 formed a settlement at Ningpo 
for trade. In 1545, because they raided neigh- 
boring villages and seized women and girls, the 
people in revenge slew 12,000 Christians, in- 
cluding 800 Portuguese, and destroyed sixty-five 
vessels. The traders were driven from the coun- 
try. 

About the same time the Spanish conquered 
the Philippines and opened Manila as a trading 
center with China. Chinese merchants flocked 
to the islands in large numbers, threatening to 
acquire a large share of the profits in trade. 
The Spaniards expeditiously instituted a mas- 
sacre, killing as many as 20,000 at one time. 
This resulted in the withdrawal of all recognition 
of the Spanish interests by the Chinese govern- 
ment and the loss of all privileges in China which 
they had gained. 

The Dutch showed the same evil spirit v/hich 
possessed the Portuguese and Spaniards. They 
seized harbors on the Pescadore Islands and 
erected forts, compelling the Chinese to labor 

[29] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

for them as serfs or slaves. The Chinese officials 
finally succeeded in persuading them to move 
their headquarters to Formosa. Protestant mis- 
sionaries from Holland gained from their gov- 
ernment the privilege of following their country- 
men to Formosa and evangelizing the people. 
Soon, however, Japan began driving missionaries 
out of her borders, and the traders, lest their con- 
nections with Japan also be lost, suppressed all 
missionary activities on the Island. The rela- 
tions of the Dutch with the Chinese continued 
to be a history of rapine and aggression. When 
their government sent an embassy to Peking, 
the repute of their countrymen was such that 
the embassy was humiliated and compelled to 
kotow to the emperor. 

In speaking of the relations of the British 
with the Chinese, S. Wells Williams once wrote, 
"his intercourse has not been such as was calcu- 
lated to impress the Chinese with a just idea of 
the character of the British nation as a leading 
Christian people, for the East India Company, 
which had the monopoly of the trade between 
the two countries for nearly two centuries, sys- 
tematically opposed every effort to diffuse Chris- 
tian doctrine and general knowledge among the 
Chinese down to the end of their control in 1834." 

Thus we see that along the coast, traders 
from European nations were destroying the 
Chinese at will, ravaging the women, forcing 
trade, and in every way showing themselves, in 
comparsion to the natives, barbarians in very 

[30] 



BREAKING DOWN OLD WALLS 

truth. When these governments sent embassies 
to Peking, these embassies were led to appear 
before the Emperor in ceremonial forms de- 
manded of tributary nations. They received, of 
course, little satisfaction. The trade with the 
Orient had become a profitable business and 
European nations had granted certain rights to 
individuals and companies. They in turn were 
expected to defend the individuals and companies 
in this trade. A clash of arms was inevitable. 
Since the European nations were superior on 
the battlefield, China was defeated and humili- 
ated by those she deemed inferior. 

Victories on the battlefield opened the way 
to demanding privileges. China was compelled 
to open certain cities to foreign trade. Conces- 
sions in or near these cities were taken and the 
beginning of foreign cities took shape. Today 
we have islands, stretches of land along the coast 
and whole cities which are held, controlled and 
policed by foreign nations. China has had, in 
consequence, to sign all manner of disgraceful 
and humiliating treaties. 

The review of such history is not pleasant, 
but it is necessary if one is to understand the 
conditions under which foreigners are in China 
today and the obligations which they have com- 
pelled China to shoulder in her relations with 
them. It was no wonder that China did not 
learn to love the foreigners. It mattered not 
who the "barbarian" might be. She was suspic- 

[31] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

ious of them all. All alike were ''foreign devils" 
to her people. 

Into such a turmoil, a hundred years ago, 
came organized missionary forces. Their rep- 
resentatives were also foreigners and the Chinese 
showed the same resentment towards them. The 
Roman Catholics, once in favor with the Chinese 
government, were now under the ban. Every 
man, woman and child from over the seas was 
a ''foreign devil" to the common people. Every 
missionary at some time has felt the sting of 
that title. 

This hostility came as a shock. Then the 
missionary learned to laugh it away. But it 
often grew wearisome, especially when little 
children lisped the word they heard on the lips 
of their elders. To have a little child point to 
one and call out in the very face of the mis- 
sionary "the foreign devil has come," cut to the 
heart like a knife. 

At first the missionaries were allowed to 
live and work nowhere but in the treaty ports. 
The attitude of some of the traders and ship 
officers often made life for the Christian worker 
very unpleasant. Some companies showed a 
finer spirit, however, and aided them in the 
work. In one of the later treaties forced on 
China a clause was quietly inserted which gave 
missionaries the privilege to travel in the in- 
terior, buy property and establish residence 
there. Rights granted in such a way did not 
serve to attract the Chinese, but if China was to 
[32] 



BREAKING DOWN OLD WALLS 

be evangelized at all, it was only through such 
doors that the way was open. 

A missionary living in the interior was not 
accompanied by soldiers for protection. When 
magistrates or people found it to their immediate 
profit to stir up a riot against the foreigner, no 
force of arms was at hand to prevent them. 
The government might have to pay for it after- 
wards, but that did not immediately trouble 
them. Thus, during the last half of the nine- 
teenth century, we have a long history of riots 
which brought suffering to the missionaries and, 
at times, to business men, travelers and consuls. 
All sorts of ridiculous stories were circulated 
amongst the common people concerning these 
"red haired people." All foreigners were sup- 
posed to be spies from their governments. They 
could see precious stones three feet below the 
surface of the ground. Their doctors used the 
eyes and hearts of little children for medicine. 
With what else, pray, could such wonderful 
cures be performed? People were warned not 
to go to these doctors, and hospitals and schools 
became favorite gathering places for incensed 
mobs. 

One of the most noted of these riots occurred 
in 1891. It was stirred up by the Hunanese 
gentry who made use of a faulty pronunciation, 
by the Christian workers, of the Chinese char- 
acter which stands for Lord. The difference be- 
tween this character and the one for pig is but 
a slight change in accent. The written char- 

[33] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

acters are entirely different. Tones have always 
been a great stumbling block for many mission- 
aries, and the mistake was vital here. The 
Hunanese seized upon this slip of the tongue and 
drew caricatures representing Christians as 
gathered about a cross upon which was crucified 
a pig. Other caricatures showed how mothers 
v/ere rendered unable to bear living children be- 
cause of a poisonous miasma emanating from 
the foreigner who had forced his presence into 
their midst. They drev/ pictures of their ancient 
sages coming down in spirit to drive out the 
pestilential foreigner from the midst of their 
beloved land. Prosperity and peace could not be 
restored until this had been accomplished. 

Millions of Chinese accepted these stories as 
true. Up and down the Yangtse valley riots 
spread in which much property was destroyed 
and many lives endangered. The people suffered 
for it, as a matter of course, but that only em- 
bittered them the more. The Roman Catholics 
demanded large indemnities. Foreign govern- 
ments brought pressure to bear upon the govern- 
ment in Peking and the people had to pay the 
bills. They were made more cautious in attack- 
ing the foreigner but they did not learn to love 
him more. Nor were they any more attracted to 
the message he tried to give them. 

It has taken years of patient suffering, de- 
termined endurance and loving ministry in ob- 
scure places and to obscure people to overcome 
such bitter antagonism. All sorts of indignities 
[34] 



BREAKING DOWN OLD WALLS 

have been hurled at the missionary, mud, stone 
and bricks being the easiest to bear. Magistrates 
have refused to see them. Inns have refused to 
house them. Cities have refused to rent or sell 
to them, even for high prices. Yet they always 
have pushed forward in the great game. They 
have been willing to travel unprotected and 
alone, with some Chinese helper, and face 
this antagonism, in order that the people might 
become used to their presence, perchance read 
some of the literature they gave away, possibly 
give them opportunity to show the love they felt 
towards these who knew not Christ, and lead 
them gradually to comprehend the benefi- 
cent purposes in Christian missions. Nothing 
but the desolation they saw on every hand, the 
suffering of the sick and poverty stricken, the 
heart hunger betrayed on their faces, and 
the infinite need of Christ for China and China 
for Christ, kept the missionaries to their task. 

They never had any difficulty in getting a 
crowd in market town or village. People wanted 
to see what the much-talked-of foreigner looked 
like. To them the foreigner was a sort of Punch 
and Judy show. A foreigner with hair of any 
color than black was a curiosity indeed. If he 
dared to travel about in foreign clothes he was 
a veritable sideshow. They crov/ded about to 
feel, as well as to see. How could any man keep 
warm with such thin garments? Why should a 
man afflict his neck with a stiff collar? Why 
didn't foreigners wear beautiful long queues? 

[35] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

Why did he not shave his head, leaving only a 
round block of hair in the center from which a 
queue naturally grew? The heavy black beards 
of some foreigners were terrifying, much like 
the pictures of certain ancient gods. How in the 
world were gold teeth grown? Was it true that 
these people were one hundred years old when 
they were born? All this is nonsense to us now 
but it was terribly real then. 

Nothing but a skillful acrobat or sleight- of- 
hand performer could draw the crowd away from 
a missionary. One worker did find his crowd 
thus drawn from him. '*If you want that sort 
of an entertainment, I can give it to you myself," 
he called out to the vanishing audience. "Do you 
see what a fine set of teeth I have? Now I sweep 
my hand across my mouth and they are gone." 
They saw his teeth had disappeared. He swept 
his hand across again and they saw them re- 
appear. He had no further trouble in holding 
his audience. His competitor afterwards came to 
him and offered him all he could possibly get 
together if the missionary would reveal how the 
trick had been done. We must not blame the 
missionaries for at times descending to such per- 
formances. Their provocation was tremendous. 

Unsanitary conditions take the lives of 
millions of the Chinese children. It took a toll of 
some of the little ones born in those missionary 
homes. Pestilences which have constantly 
stalked abroad in this land, have not always 
passed those doors without entering. So unex- 

[36] 



BREAKING DOWN OLD WALLS 

pected diseases in mission homes have caused 
lonely night vigils and days of anxious nursing. 
Women have seen their husbands stricken down. 
Men have laid away their wives in lonely graves. 
Ofttimes when the husband has been out on 
itinerating trips the mother has found herself 
called upon to face the vigil alone. No telegraph 
line was there to hurry her husband back to her 
side. 

There were times when the missionaries, 
had they dared, would have dropped all and fled 
from the task. The loneliness and the isolation 
seemed too great, the skies leaden to their 
prayers. The pitiful conditions of the people 
about them were often appalling and strained 
their powers of endurance to the breaking. But 
it was those pitiful sights which held them to 
the task. How could they leave a people so 
afflicted with sin and disease? 

As the great problem gripped them they 
went on in faith and lost all thought of swerving 
from the superhuman task. Sickness might send 
some back to the homeland. Furloughs helped 
lighten the burden. Friends would ask the ever 
reiterated questions, "Have you not done your 
share? Why must you go back to such a task?" 
Before the furlough was ended the pull would 
come upon the heartstrings and the missionaries 
would find themselves eagerly looking forward 
to their return to the field. There was nothing 
like it in the homeland. Why shouldn't they go 

[37] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

back? There was a great game to win, a race 
to be run and a victory for Christ to achieve. 

Now the walls have fallen; the victory is 
being won. A new China is being born. Blind, 
ignorant prejudice is giving way. Great men in 
i^nma are taking lessons from the rest of the 
world. Idols have been ignominiously dumped 
out of some of the temples and trampled into 
dust. Some of them have crept back — and more 
of them will if the Christian world does not rise 
quickly to meet the task. Temples have been 
turned into modern schools. The education of 
girls has begun. Although the old style Classic 
school is still found everywhere, modern educa- 
tion is what the government supports. Opium 
has been cast out and, but for the quasi-protec- 
tion of the military classes and the illicit trade 
by the Japanese, would be dead. Railroads are 
no longer held up by graves and temples. Flour 
mills and cotton mills are spreading over the 
land. Dragons no longer hold dominion over the 
coal and iron in the hills. An absolute mon- 
archy which for two hundred years had been 
crushing a virile people has been overthrown. 
We cannot yet say a republic has been born. 
These are critical times but we believe a real 
republic will be established in China. Doubtless 
the recent few years of failure and misrule have 
done more to open the eyes of the educated 
Chinese to the weakness of their people, to the 
social selfishness which enslaves them and to 
their inability to achieve ends which other na- 

[38] 



BREAKING DOWN OLD WALLS 

tions are achieving, than all of their previous 
contact with the Western world. The fact that 
they are so keenly realizing this is, to our mind, 
the hope of China. 



39 i 



Ill 

THE TRANSITION PERIOD IN CHINA 

The transition in China has been marked 
by many difficulties, some of them of a political 
nature, and these we will take up later. The last 
great effort to cast off all foreigners and elimi- 
nate all foreign ideas took place in the Boxer 
calamity of 1900. Then one hundred and fifty 
foreigners and thousands of Chinese Christians 
laid down their lives in martyrdom. The entire 
Peking Government, with the possible exception 
of the Emperor, were partners in this crime 
against humanity, which fortunately, failed of its 
aim. 

Today China aspires to be numbered 
amongst the world's family of nations. In order 
to preserve her own borders intact, her repre- 
sentatives have gone to great trouble that 
they might also be present at the League of 
Nations compact. Forty and more years ago 
her first students went abroad to study; but it is 
within the last twenty years they have flocked 
in great crowds to the universities of other 
nations. Commercial Commissions have gone 
especially to America and on to circuit the globe 
that international relations in commerce might 

[40] 



THE TRANSITION PERIOD IN CHINA 

be built up. From among the nations America 
has been sought as a friend, a helper and model. 

The Chinese have always shown themselves 
to be a teachable people, willing to absorb 
knowledge, especially if the ideas gained were 
of a moral nature. Although a peace loving 
nation, they have suffered many wars and re- 
bellions. Suffice to say, however, it has not been 
the common people who have brought on the 
wars. They have shown themselves long suffer- 
ing, choosing to win victories by educational 
and diplomatic methods, rather than by force of 
arms. In such ways they have through the 
centuries absorbed even their conquerors. Both 
Mongolia and Manchuria have thus become a 
part of the greater China. Should the Japanese 
persist in their present course of conquering 
this nation, it is sure that in time they also 
would lose their identity, unless they should 
systematically prohibit the Chinese from enter- 
ing their Island borders. For a long time the 
modern world looked upon China as a backward 
and exclusive nation, a sleeping giant, slow to 
change, slow to move. Gradually this opinion 
has changed and now she is seen to be a giant 
in weakness, paralyzed by selfishness. 

It took a long time to persuade the Chinese 
to allow the building of the first railroad within 
China's borders. That was in 1876. The line 
was only twelve miles long, reaching from 
Shanghai to Woosung. The privilege was 
granted, but when the officials saw the iron 

[41] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

horse and train of cars, they became alarmed, 
bought back the line, tore it up and shipped it to 
Formosa lest the spirits of their ancestors be 
aroused and calamity be brought upon the na- 
tion. Upon the site of the station they built a 
temple to the Queen of Heaven. 

Today there are some six thousand miles 
of railroad in China and much more would have 
been constructed had not the European war cut 
off the funds. These railroads are largely gov- 
ernment owned, the capital being loaned by 
foreign powers. One can now take the train at 
Shanghai, on the Shanghai-Nanking line and in 
seven hours be two hundred miles up the 
Yangtse River. Steam ferries meet certain 
trains and passengers are quickly transferred 
across the river to Pukow where another line 
runs seven hundred miles north to Tientsin. 
Here one can go on to Manchuria and connect 
with the Siberian line. Or, going the opposite 
way, one soon finds himself within the old walls 
of Peking itself. From here another line runs 
south to Hankow, where lies the great Hanyang 
Iron and Steel Works, which has been turning 
out steel rails for the railroads in China and, 
for a time, sent 70,000 tons of pig iron annually 
to America. Since the Japanese have gained a 
monopoly of these works, the product now prob- 
ably gets no further than that country. But one 
can proceed still farther down by railway into 
the very heart of Hunan. Only a short distance 
is yet to be completed and then one can go on 

[42] 



THE TRANSITION PERIOD IN CHINA 

clear to Canton on the south border of the na- 
tion. Even during the World War American 
engineers were surveying a course for the rail- 
road which is eventually to strike the heart of 
Szchuen, the western-most province of China. 

Chinese graves know no such thing as close 
communion. Families have their own private 
burial plots and these are scattered everywhere 
over the land. Lone grave mounds in the midst 
of a small cultivated field are also conspicuous 
for their numbers. These are stumbling blocks 
to all railroad construction. A grave is sacred. 
The Chinese believe the spirits of the dead re- 
turn to the earth to bless or curse. Hence there 
is need to keep these spirits propitiated. To dis- 
turb a grave might bring trouble. Since graves 
are everywhere, it is impossible to run a rail- 
road line through the country without striking 
thousands of them. Today the government has 
fixed prices for the removal of graves. The 
money is paid to the relatives and they find 
another spot in which the dead bones may rest. 

One of the most noticeable things in China 
is the lack of trees. The nation lives by the 
products of the land. Forests interfere with the 
cultivation of the soil and so centuries ago the 
land was denuded of its forests. The Chinese 
have not realized that this condition is the 
source of their many floods and droughts. Nor 
has it seemed to enter their minds that trees 
would have prevented the erosion of the soil. 
In some respects the Chinese farmers can give 

[43] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

points to farmers of other nations. For forty 
centuries they have produced every kind of food 
which the nation desired. 

So sure have they been that the methods of 
their ancestors in agriculture were the best that 
for ages they have not changed their methods. 
If they did, the powers of the wind and water 
(fengshui) would bring disaster to the land. In 
some places they have been averse to deepening 
the channels of rivers lest they disturb these 
spirits. Rivers have been left alone to silt up, 
the farmers slowly increasing the dykes on 
either side to hold the flood water. In such 
places the bed of the river has been higher 
than the surrounding fields. Mouths of rivers 
have silted full and when floods come the water 
merely finds an outlet over the cultivated fields 
destroying not only the crops, but often many 
homes. 

Chang Chien, a man for a time Secretary of 
Agriculture under the Republic, had great in- 
fluence in his native district of Nantungchow, 
Kiangsu Province. He was a pioneer leader in 
getting the people to rid themselves of the age- 
old superstitions. Among other reforms in his 
district he has an agricultural college and an 
experiment farm. He has imported samples of 
wheat, rice and cotton from other countries. 
The district is now the heaviest cotton producing 
section of the country and has the finest grade 
of cotton. The wheat grown in the district is 
ground in the modern flour mill he has erected. 

[44] 



THE TRANSITION PERIOD IN CHINA 

In the cotton mills the cotton is turned to thread 
for the home looms which he has taken steps 
to improve. 

Forestry is being practised in many places 
on the hitherto barren hills in many sections of 
the country. Fruit trees are being planted. The 
University of Nanking in its department of 
forestry has taken pains to introduce useful 
foreign trees as well as all native kinds. Tens 
of thousands of these young trees are being 
grown in the university grounds, and demands 
for them come from all parts of China. 

Thirty years from now the hills and barren 
places will be covered with forests, doing their 
work as conservators of moisture and preparing 
soil for the valleys below. 

Before it was possible to push railroad con- 
struction, the government saw the value of tele- 
graph lines. Wires now have formed a network 
over the entire country, connecting all provincial 
capitals and prominent cities, and being extended 
far into Mongolia. Telephones are common in 
all large cities. Field telephones followed both 
armies during the Rebellion of 1913, and the 
army is equipped with them at the present time. 
Electric lights, both for municipalities and 
private companies, are common. Flour mills 
and cotton mills are rapidly increasing. Steam 
launches have pushed their way up the small 
rivers. Although few good roads are found out- 
side of cities, whose streets have been rapidly 
macadamized during these last few years, auto- 

[45] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

mobiles are increasing in numbers. Not only 
foreigners, but the Chinese themselves have used 
them for travel across the plains of Mongolia. 
Improvement of the country roads, which for ages 
have known no repair, is bound to come. Now 
jinrickshas are found wherever it is possible 
to pull them. The people are demanding more 
rapid transportation than the sedan chair, the 
wheelbarrow and the sailboat. Even aeroplanes 
have been used in some of the numerous rebel- 
lions of the last few years. 

Changes in educational methods have been 
as radical as in these other fields. For thirteen 
centuries China followed one system, without 
change of textbook or method of teaching. The 
children went to their schools at daylight and 
remained there, with the exception of short in- 
tervals for eating, until dark. School began late 
in the first month and continued until the latter 
part of the twelfth month. Through heat and 
cold, rain and sunshine, the children were ex- 
pected to be at their task of memorizing the 
Classics. They learned to explain them, to write 
essays and poems founded upon them. Their 
ambition consisted in being able to pass gov- 
ernment examinations, so that they might be- 
come officials and thereby gain riches. If they 
failed in this lofty ambition they might still be- 
come teachers of schools and be exempted from 
physical labor. When a boy began school he 
put on a long gown, typifying the high calling 
of a man with a degree, the end toward which 

[46] 



THE TRANSITION PERIOD IN CHINA 

he set his energies. In his home or elsewhere 
he was not expected to do any manual work. 
His less fortunate brothers and sisters could wait 
upon him. His finger nails could grow long and 
his shoulders could become stooped. 

In 1907 an edict was issued by the Manchu 
government abolishing this effete educational 
method and establishing modern education in its 
place. The new Chinese publishing houses 
found a great task on their hands. They must 
prepare a series of textbooks covering all grades 
from primary to university. Not only must geog- 
raphies, arithmetics, physiologies and books on 
manual training, domestic science and ethics be 
thus prepared for the pupils, but companion 
books must be prepared for the teachers that 
they might know how to use the textbooks. Very 
few of the older teachers were able to adapt 
themselves to the change. In back districts they 
kept up the old style of memorizing the Classics. 
Younger teachers hurried to Japan. Normal 
schools were opened for others. Mission schools 
were flooded with new pupils, all desiring to learn 
the new studies and methods in the shortest 
possible space of time. Graduates found ready 
positions with large salaries. So great was the 
demand that it became difficult to hold sufficient 
teachers for our mission schools and salaries had 
to be considerably increased to keep them with 
us. 

The new education brought in the closing 
of schools on Sunday. In some places part of 

[47] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

the day was utilized for the teaching of ethics. 
English, the one foreign language sought for, 
was introduced into the higher primary grades. 
Music, once a lost art, came to the front. At 
first the new teachers brought back many tunes 
from Japan. Now they are writing their own. 
Japan began manufacturing baby organs for 
them. The Chinese now make most of their 
own. Playgrounds became an essential part of 
the school property and gymnastics a definite 
part of the curriculum. Military drill is taught 
in most schools and the old fashioned Chinese 
gymnastics are being revived. Soccer football 
is a common game. China, with her one hun- 
dred millions of children of school age is such 
a tremendous proposition that it has not yet 
been possible to reach a tithe of them. Girls' 
schools are found in all centers. In the primary 
grade the two sexes are often taught together. 
The revenues of the country have been so drained 
for military purposes that children must still 
pay a school fee. Hence to the children of the 
poor, education is altogether denied. The 
poverty-stricken who can not send their chil- 
dren, though books and tuition are both free, 
are so great in number that it will be a long 
time before universal education can be given to 
China's millions. 

One had to live for but a short time in the 
land in the days of the Manchu Dynasty to 
realize how degenerate the government had be- 
come. Officers were openly bought and sold. 

[48] 



THE TRANSITION PERIOD IN CHINA 

Minor offices were farmed out to the highest 
bidder. If scholars were to pass the govern- 
ment examinations it was necessary to come 
with money to salve the palms of the examiners. 
Mere learning took one but a little way along 
the highway to public preferment. "If one has 
money even though his cause be unrighteous he 
need not fear to enter the doors of the yamen," 
was a common saying among the people. Lest 
the public might learn to object to such an in- 
justice and oppression, the people were not 
allowed to hold mass meetings of any kind. 
Until the establishment of the new regime, 
China had very few assembly halls, save the 
Christian churches. 

With the coming of the Republic an attempt 
was made to establish fixed salaries for all 
public office-holders. In order to overcome the 
iniquitous ''squeeze" system, officials were 
directed to prepare annual budgets for their dis- 
tricts. All monies collected, whether as taxes, 
fines, rental of public properties, etc. must be 
reported to the provincial capital. Yamen run- 
ners were forbidden under pain of punishment 
to force money from the common people. Since 
so large a portion of China's population are 
illiterate and poor, the privilege of the elective 
franchise was granted only to those who pos- 
sessed a certain degree of education or owned 
a certain amount of property. 

Those early days of the Republic were filled 
with rosy hopes, but the people soon found that 

[49] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

the firm establishment of a government by and 
for the people demanded on their part unselfish 
patriotism to a greater degree than some were 
willing to give. From the day Yuan Shi-kai be- 
gan the attempt to centralize power in one man's 
hand, down to the present, rights have been 
given, rights have been abused and rights have 
been taken away. The rise of the power of the 
military has plunged the country into civil 
strife and confusion. Through all of these dis- 
appointing troubles, the educated people have 
kept their eyes fixed upon the final goal of a 
real republic of, by and for the people. It is 
possible that outside powers may have to step 
in and direct for a time China's finances, but 
knowledge has so increased in the land that the 
battle for righteousness and justice to all men 
is in the end bound to be victorious. 

Perhaps the question of armies and navies 
is not so popular as it was before the European 
war. China, defeated by Japan, harassed by 
other nations and troubled by brigands, was led 
by Yuan Shi-kai, then a growing military officer, 
to reform her army. Almost up to the day of 
the Boxer trouble we can remember seeing regi- 
ments in the old style dress with full moon- 
shaped patch of bright cloth tacked on to their 
coats before and aft. They carried their bird- 
cages, their fans and umbrellas along with their 
other accoutrements. Bows, arrows and spears 
were still popular. 

After the war with Japan, Yuan Shi-kai 

[50] 



THE TRANSITION PERIOD IN CHINA 

was given permission to equip and drill one 
army division in modern style. This was about 
1896. As with the training of the Japanese 
army, so in China, German officers and German 
methods were employed. Gradually the old 
style soldier disappeared. The army is now 
largely equipped with small arms made in its 
own arsenals. Most of the larger guns are still 
bought abroad. Although China has sought to 
follow up its armies with a proper eommisariat, 
during the fighting of recent years between the 
North and South, the soldiers lived to a large 
extent off the country through which German 
troops passed, during the European war. The 
Chinese army morals have degenerated since 
North and South have been at war. Yet they loot 
and ravage no worse than their European 
models. They have little patriotism and little 
loyalty save to the Commander-in-chief under 
whom they serve. They look upon him as an 
Oriental Prince who feeds them and to whom 
they should be loyal. At the present time it is 
the military party v/hich threatens the very life 
of China. It has been largely on its behalf that 
so many secret loans have been m^ade recently 
by Japan to the Chinese government. 

China is just awakening to the value of 
sanitation. Peking formerly had the reputation 
of being the foulest city on earth. Her streets, 
before the Boxer year, were piled high with the 
accumulated sweepings of generations. It was 
said that the heavy Peking carts, while traversing 

[51] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

these dumps in the streets were completely over- 
turned, dumping their passengers into some 
nearby cesspool and actually drowning them be- 
fore they could be rescued. 

When the Allied troops reached and took 
possession of Peking in 1900 they found the city 
streets thus turned into miniature mountains 
and valleys and lakes. Prince and pauper were 
set to work cleaning up the place. Since then 
Peking has kept its city in a fairly c^ean condi- 
tion. Now the automobile runs alongside the 
jinricksha; the Peking cart, the wheelbarrow 
and the camel meander smoothly along without 
danger to each other. 

What Peking was has been the condition 
of practically every city in China. And what 
Peking is, is the goal towards which many 
prominent cities are now working. Streets 
which were sewers and mudholes are being 
macadamized or paved and daily cleaned. 
Garbage is carried away and used on the land. 
The people do not have the same sensitiveness 
to odors as foreigners, so it is often possible to 
meet a garbage carrier swinging his double load 
on his carrying pole, treading his way through 
the dense street crowds. Nevertheless China 
shows a growing knowledge of the value of 
cleanliness and is bound to place herself along- 
side other nations in the progress of sanitation. 

Tuberculosis is very noticeable among the 
educated classes. The old Confucian scholar 
thought it the proper and dignified thing to 

[52] 



THE TRANSITION PERIOD IN CHINA 

eschew exercise. He always walked slowly and 
with shoulders stooped, and his lungs became 
a paradise for germs. Expectorating is a popular 
habit among the people. Children spit in imita- 
tion of their elders, most of whom, when indoors, 
do not take the trouble even to spit out of the 
door. On the stone paved streets the sputum is 
quickly changed to dry powder, and floats into 
the air to be drawn into the lungs of any on the 
crowded thoroughfare. So the disease is spread. 

China's new schoolboys and girls now rush 
at recess for the playground. The drill master 
teaches them to stand straight and fill their 
lungs. They know the value of developing 
every part of their bodies. A missionary who 
will deliver lectures on sanitation and hygiene 
has no trouble to get into these schools. From 
the schools the knowledge of how to care for 
the body is passed to the homes where among 
other things the children demonstrate to their 
parents how flies defile their food and bring 
disease. 

Smallpox, cholera and the plague have slain 
countless numbers of the people. Local govern- 
ments now co-operate with the mission hospitals, 
not only in combating some immediate scourge, 
but in encouraging vaccination among the 
people by giving lectures and demonstrations. 
One of the mission doctors in Hunan, seeing 
cholera spreading through his city, sent sand- 
wich men through the streets, telling the people 
how to avoid the disease and to come at once to 

[53] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

the mission hospital in case they were taken 
down. He was able to save some hundreds of 
cases who came in response to this advertising. 
In our own city we called upon the city council 
to furnish funds for virus and, in a short time, 
vaccinated over nine hundred against smallpox 
bringing to a swift end an epidemic of this 
disease. In two large families, in each of which 
we vaccinated more than thirty persons, one 
case had already developed in each home, but 
not another member took the disease. 

The attitude of the people and government 
towards Christianity has radically changed. 
Since the Boxer year the number of Christians 
has been trebled. At one time in recent years 
over eight hundred of those in Peking holding 
office under the government were members of 
Christian churches. The commander-in-chief of 
one of the numerous branches of the army is a 
Christian. He always sought Christian pastors, 
Chinese and foreign, to speak to his men. During 
the last winter, while in Hunan, he sent for a 
well-known Chinese evangelist to hold meetings 
among his troops. Nearly a score of his officers, 
two thousand of his men, and one magistrate 
were baptized. He has had distributed large 
numbers of Bibles among his troops. His army, 
it is interesting to observe, has the reputation of 
being the most orderly and upright force of all 
the armed men in China. 

One of the most remarkable edicts was 
issued by the late President of the Republic, 

[54] 



THE TRANSITION PERIOD IN CHINA 

Yuan Shi-kai, April 18, 1913. It was as follows: 
"Prayer is requested for the National Assembly 
now in session; for the new government; for the 
President who is elected; for the Constitution of 
the Republic; that the Government may be re- 
cognized by the Powers; that peace may reign 
within the country; that strong and virtuous 
men may be elected to office; that the Govern- 
ment may be established upon a strong founda- 
tion. Upon receipt of this you are requested to 
notify all churches in your province that April 
27th has been set aside as a day of prayer for 
the nation. Let all ta,ke part." 

In reading the above edict one does not 
need to jump to the conclusion that Yuan Shi- 
kai had come to have faith in Christ. Very few 
of the missionary body so interpreted it. It 
looked more as though he were trying to feel 
the pulse of a popular movement. However, 
such an edict caused governors, magistrates and 
the leading men of the country to attend at least 
one service in a Christian church. That made it 
an unprecedented action and one of far-reaching 
influence. Churches were no longer to be shun- 
ned but patronized. Missionaries were to be 
looked upon as friends useful to the country 
and people. Since that time officers of the gov- 
ernment have frequently entered the doors of 
the churches. 

On that April 27th, the magistrate of our 
city came to our church and was given a seat 
upon the platform. Other leading men were 

[55] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

given special seats. It was impressive indeed to 
see the Christian pastor conduct before those 
men a Christian service. Perfect propriety and 
reverence were observed. Before them he stood 
and offered to the one true God the prayer of in- 
tercession for the Chinese nation. Then, before 
them and to the assembled audience, he spoke 
with great earnestness of the need for leaders 
and people alike to recognize God in the nation, 
if they would become righteous and great. No 
other meeting could have given those leaders a 
better understanding of the purpose for which 
we are striving to establish the Church of Christ 
in China. 

In spite of the large number of Scripture 
portions which have been circulated throughout 
China, the educated men have not found it con- 
venient to acquaint themselves with the teach- 
ings of the Bible. Their previous knowledge of 
Christianity was based upon distorted reports 
which anti-foreign propagandists circulated 
through the country. It has therefore been im- 
perative to press Bible study ahead of evange- 
listic meetings. Instead of calling upon men to 
confess their faith in Christ at such meetings, 
it has been found wiser to enlist them in special 
Bible classes for the definite study of the Scrip- 
tures. Many of these men have accepted such 
invitations and have regularly attended. Some 
of them invariably reach the decision and openly 
become followers of Christ. Instead of the few 
poor ignorant men and women who formerly 

[56] 



THE TRANSITION PERIOD IN CHINA 

made up the bulk of our church membership, we 
are finding an ever increasing number of the 
educated awakened leaders of China attending 
the services and gradually coming to faith in 
Christ. 

*'The signs of the times, the lessons of the 
past, the indications of the future, the call of 
Providence and the voices which come to us 
borne upon every breeze — all alike bid us lay 
our plans upon a scale worthy of men who ex- 
pect to conquer the world." 



[57] 



IV 
THE PASSING OF THE OPIUM CURSE 

We have been noting changes which very 
rapidly took place in the social, political and 
moral life of the Chinese. One of the most re- 
markable of these was the removal of the opium 
traffic. On September 20, 1906, the Empress 
Dowager issued the famous edict calling for the 
entire suppression of the traffic in and smoking 
of opium within the boundaries of the Empire. 
This was to be carried out by 1916. Very few 
foreigners had the optimism to believe that this 
would actually be accomplished within the time 
set, if at all. The government was receiving 
large revenues from the Indian imports. Would 
it be possible to run the government without 
these revenues? The vice had become so 
strongly entrenched among the people that it 
looked like a superhuman task to stamp it out. 
There were probably not less than 25,000,000 
addicts to the drug; 22,000 tons of it being an- 
nually consumed. The Province of Yunnan, in 
Southwest China, had nearly one-third of its 
arable ground planted to poppy. In Szchuen 
and Kansu provinces the majority of the men 
and many women were drug users. Around 

[58] 



THE PASSING OF THE OPIUM CURSE 

practically every city in the country the fields 
in the springtime were gorgeous with the beauti- 
ful poppy blossoms. As one Chinese said, "The 
devil always clothes himself in fine garments." 

The Philippine Commission gave this ex- 
planation for the drug's hold upon the Chinese. 
"What people on earth are so poorly provided 
with food as the indigent Chinese, or so destitute 
of amusement as all Chinese, rich and poor! — 
Absolute dullness and dreariness seem to pre- 
vail everywhere. As these two demons drive 
the Caucasian to drink, so they drive the Chinese 
to opium. If the Chinese seem to contract such 
evil habits more easily than other nations, and 
are more slaves of them, is not that due to the 
dullness of the lives of the well-to-do and the 
painful squalor of the indigent?" 

Opium was first brought to China by the 
East India Company. The first edict prohibiting 
opium smoking was issued by the Emperor Yung 
Cheng in 1729. At that time, however, very 
little opium was thus used. It was in 1757 that 
the monopoly of opium cultivation passed into 
the hands of the East India Company and they 
began promoting the sale of it in China. Im- 
portation was forbidden by the Chinese imperial 
authorities in 1796, but this only encouraged 
smuggling. In 1839 one Chinese commissioner 
seized over 20,000 chests of the drug; but such 
seizures were like trying to sweep back the tide 
of the sea. The government opposition brought 

[59] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

on trouble with the British government which 
felt compelled to defend the trade. The war 
which followed was not directly aimed at com- 
pelling the Chinese to import opium, yet the 
treaty which ended it included and legalized 
opium imports. In 1858 the traiRc was definitely 
legalized and a tariff fixed. High tariff had the 
effect of stimulating the local growing of poppy 
but the flavor of the Indian product was better 
liked, so local growing did not hinder the im- 
ports. The number of habituates steadily in- 
creased. Six times as much was being produced 
in China as was imported from India. 

From the beginning missionaries opposed 
the traffic. Opium addicts were never admitted 
to church membership. Doctors found that 
many diseases when attacking opium smokers 
were hard to cure. Dysentery was almost in- 
variably fatal. The use of the drug brought 
most of the addicts to poverty until they were 
using a minimun of food and a maximum of the 
drug. The number of suicides using opium as a 
means to end life was appalling. It was easy 
to find it about the house or in a nearby shop. 
When a woman felt that she had been wronged, 
in her blind anger, she would obtain a sufficient 
quantity of the drug and swallow it. In order to 
bring remorse to those who had wronged her, 
she would announce to her family what she had 
done; or, if the offenders lived elsewhere, she 
would hasten to their home that she might die 
on their doorstep. The people believed that the 

[60] 



THE PASSING OF THE OPIUM CURSE 

spirit of sucti a suicide would return to torment 
those who had wronged her. 

When it became known that missionary 
doctors were often able to revive such suicides 
they were continually called on for help. There 
was no hesitation about paying any reasonable 
fee asked. Day after day these calls would come. 
Often two calls would come at the same time, 
then the doctor would be obliged to divide up 
his assistants and work on both cases. Hours 
of hard work would have to be spent before the 
patient could be pronounced out of danger. 

We remember working over one such case 
while out on an itinerating trip. A fellow mis- 
sionary doctor had passed that way the day be- 
fore and had been halted to save a young woman 
who had swallowed a quantity of the drug. A 
stretcher was improvised and the party followed 
him to the next town where he was to remain all 
night. He had stayed up a good share of the 
night directing the treatment of the case, but 
knowing that we were following he pressed on, 
advising them to call us in when we reached 
their place. When we arrived they were still 
trying to carry out the directions they had re- 
ceived. The woman was more hopeful in appear- 
ance, but if they had allowed her to drop off in 
slumber, she would probably never have 
awakened in this world. We also spent some 
hours on the case and were able to give a favor- 
able prognosis when we continued our journey. 

The Anti-Opium Society was founded and 

[61] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

fostered by the missionary body. It seemed a 
hopeless job they were attempting. As far as 
that was concerned, the problem of evangelizing 
China was equally hopeless. But missionaries 
are optimistic or they are not missionaries. No 
task is too great to attempt so long as one be- 
lieves God is on the side of right. The name of 
the late Hampden DuBose will always be con- 
nected with the Anti-Opium Society as its Presi- 
dent and originator. Dr. W. H. Park was for 
many years the secretary. He compiled a mass 
of data from the medical men and others, show- 
ing the effects of opium upon the human system. 
Every possible bit of useful information bear- 
ing upon the drug and its deadly effects was 
given to the public and the government. British 
missionaries sought to influence their home gov- 
ernment and get them to stop the Indian im- 
ports. But the British government was also 
deriving large revenues from the traffic and was 
quite unwilling to lose this income. It was 
finally obliged by public opinion to send an 
opium commission to India to study the trafllc 
and the influence of the drug upon its users. 
This commission brought back a report which 
described the effects of the drug as similar to 
"an after-dinner cigar or an afternoon cup of 
tea." In face of such willful blindness the task 
seemed more hopeless than ever. 

In 1904 America began to grapple with the 
problem as the use of the drug in the Philippines 
had become widespread, especially among the 

[62] 



THE PASSING OF THE OPIUM CURSE 

Chinese living there. A commission was sent 
from the United States to study the problem. 
The report of this commission was largely based 
upon the observations of Bishop Brent, Dr. H. C. 
Stunts and Dr. Hamilton Mabie Wright. It 
went far to change public opinion of the world 
as regards the opium traffic both in China and 
the Philippines. The China Anti-Opium Society 
had translations of this report made and placed 
in the hands of government officials in Peking. 
The result v/as shown in the famous edict for 
the entire suppression of the traffic in China, 
issued in 1906. 

Foreign countries laughed at the edict and 
those directly interested in the traffic showed 
no intention of co-operating with China or curb- 
ing their businesses. A strong appeal to the 
President of the United States from representa- 
tive missionary associations and from com- 
mercial institutions in the homeland to the 
effect that the American government should 
undertake to assist China in securing the gradual 
abolition of the traffic which the edict proposed, 
was effective. The Department of State ad- 
dressed a circular letter to the Powers interested 
suggesting the organization of an international 
commission to investigate thoroughly the entire 
opium traffic and its effect upon addicts. Thus 
was formed the International Opium Commis- 
sion which met in Shanghai in February, 1909. 
Before adjourning, this Commission unani- 
mously adopted nine fundamental conclusions, 

[63] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

condemning the opium evil on both economic 
and moral grounds. 

England finally came to an agreement 
whereby, if the Chinese government would, on 
its part, gradually reduce the production and 
use of opium, Great Britain would decrease the 
annual import of the drug by one-tenth. As 
rapidly as it was found that a province was clear 
of the poppy England was to cease importing 
opium into that province. China also asked that 
in case she could shorten the period of years to 
less than ten, England also agree to cease 
the importation of opium accordingly. England 
agreed and, to the surprise of all, China began, 
not only to issue edicts, but to enforce them. 

Opium smoking officials were ordered to 
break off the use of the drug within a short 
period or lose their offices. Soldiers were sent 
through the country and poppy fields were 
pulled up by the roots. The farmers were 
ordered to replant the fields in grain. Where 
they persisted in replanting poppy they were 
severely punished, in a few cases losing their 
heads. Rapidly came in the word that this 
province and that province was free of the 
poppy. The British representatives were sent 
to examine the provinces reported and found 
them cleared. Quickly a large portion of the 
country was free and the importation of opium 
became illegal. By 1913 England was forced 
thus to cease importing the drug into China. 
The opium princes suddenly found their Hong- 

[64] 



THE PASSING OF THE OPIUM CURSE 

kong and Shanghai warehouses full of opium 
and no sale for it. 

Hongkong is entirely under British juris- 
diction. The British government also has con- 
trol of their concession in Shanghai. Therefore 
the local government in these places is not re- 
sponsible to the Chinese government and did 
not follow the example in suppressing the use of 
the drug. By the side of the foreign concessions 
in Shanghai, is the old Chinese city. That por- 
tion under foreign management refused to close 
its opium dens, and the Shanghai Municipality 
received a considerable revenue from these. The 
opium users in the Chinese city had but to move 
over the boundary line between the two cities 
to obtain all the opium they desired. Smuggling 
was easy and flourished. Chinese coming down 
from the interior to trade, could easily wrap a 
considerable amount of opium up with other 
goods, or slip a fair sized ball of the drug into 
their handbags. The Chinese government sta- 
tioned police at the various railroad stations 
in the interior and all baggage was carefully 
examined. Opium, when found, was confiscated 
and burned. Smugglers tried various devices 
but soon found it a losing business. The opium 
princes had not expected such stringent measures 
and it began to dawn upon them that they were 
not going to get rid of their supplies of opium 
so easily as they had expected, if at all. 

They began other measures. A Chinese 
shop, in an interior city found selling opium, 

[65] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

was at once closed by police and the shopkeeper 
v/as punished. The opium magnates sent their 
agents to such men and arranged to take over 
the shop under a foreign company sign. They 
did this in the city of Hangchow and instigated 
the Chinese again to sell opium. The police 
promptly arrested and punished the offender, 
closing his shop. The foreign managers sought 
audience with the local officials, claiming that 
these were interfering with foreign trade and 
foreign shops. They claimed that such action 
could only be taken through the British Con- 
sulate. They demanded the release of the per- 
sons arrested and the right to reopen the shop. 
The local officials replied that if the British 
Consul had any complaint to make about the 
matter, it was the privilege of that Consul to 
make it. Until he did they would continue to 
manage the affairs of the city as they had been 
doing. The foreign managers stormed and tried 
every possible way to win their case but were 
told to present it in due form to the Consul who 
would bring it before the Chinese officials. The 
Chinese knew the treaty rights and for once the 
foreigner was beaten. 

Chinese papers began to gather evidence 
wherever they found the opium syndicate break- 
ing treaty rights, and such evidence was pub- 
lished in the papers. One such paper, published 
in English by a Chinese editor, had among its 
correspondents a few missionaries who continued 
to follow up the work which the missionary 

[66] 



THE PASSING OF THE OPIUM CURSE 

body so long had fostered. Some of the articles 
were not pleasing to those who were seeking to 
evade law. The dealers squirmed under the fire 
they brought upon themselves and sought to 
have an injunction placed upon this paper, for- 
bidding the publishing of such articles. An 
American lawyer, practicing in the Shanghai 
courts, defended the editor. Very pointed ques- 
tions were asked of the opium promotors when 
they appeared upon the witness stand and the 
blackness of the traffic was soon exposed. British 
papers followed their usual custom and printed 
the stenographic reports of the law case. What 
the opium promoters had sought to suppress 
in one paper now appeared in all the English 
papers. The case was closed and the editor 
acquitted when the American lawyer for the de- 
fense had preached one of the greatest anti- 
opium sermons ever delivered in China. 

Following the meeting of the Commission 
in Shanghai a still greater International Opium 
Commission met at The Hague in 1911. Twelve 
governments were represented. It was at this 
meeting that one of the commissioners from 
China voiced the sentiment of a large majority 
of the influential men of his country in a speech 
made at a reception given at the Hotel Cecil. 
The speech was an appeal to the English people 
and closed with the following words: *'There- 
fore, for the sake of your national righteousness, 
for the sake of our fame, for the sake of hu- 
manity at large, and the Chinese people in par- 

[67] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

ticular, and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ 
in whose sight we are all God's children, and 
who has taught us to love one another, we in- 
voke your continued co-operation in this opium 
question until the last shipment of Indian opium 
has been landed in China, until the last opium 
pipe has been burned, and until the last acre of 
poppy shall have been uprooted and the opium 
evil has disappeared, not only from China, but 
throughout all the world." 

In 1915 and 1916 when Yuan Shi-kai was 
seeking to establish the monarchical form of 
government once more in China and make him- 
self its new emperor, a large portion of the 
country rose up in opposition. Armies were 
raised against him. He found himself with a 
war upon his hands and much of the regular 
government revenues cut off. Several times the 
opium princes had tried to bribe the government 
to relax its opposition and allow them to dis- 
pose of their supplies. They still had huge 
quantities of it stored in their warehouses. In 
all the world there was no such market as China 
had been and they did not care to lose the mill- 
ions invested in it. Yuan, short of funds, yielded 
and granted the distribution in three coast prov- 
inces until such time as the present stock was 
exhausted. Yuan sent men to Hongkong to 
oversee the distribution and to collect the tax. 
His monarchical reign lasted but a short two 
months. The ceremony of inaugurating it never 
took place. He had to acknowledge publicly 

[68] 



THE PASSING OF THE OPIUM CURSE 

his error, but the pressure of the opposition and 
his own keen disappointment brought on his 
death. The desire for a Republic now became 
more firmly established in the hearts of the 
people. His plans for the reintroduction of opium 
were overthrown and his agents either lost their 
lives or fled the country. 

What to do with these huge supplies of 
opium continued to be a problem. So long as 
the drug was stored in Shanghai smuggling to 
some extent was bound to continue. The opium 
merchants had no other market. Time and 
time again the Chinese Customs seized quantities 
of the smuggled goods. It was invariably 
burned. The government finally decided that 
the easiest method of ridding the country of the 
menace was to purchase the entire amount, now 
valued at twenty-five millions of dollars, and 
burn it. Officials were sent to take over the sup- 
plies and carefully guard it for the burning. 
Foreign consuls and others were invited to see 
the work done. Special ovens were constructed 
and days were expended in getting rid of the 
drug. In spite of all this care later statements 
appeared in the Shanghai papers to the effect 
that very little of the real opium was destroyed. 
Substitute balls were used and the real article 
spirited away by conscienceless Chinese officials 
to be later smuggled through the country. 

At any rate the traffic has not been stopped. 
Good evidence has been obtained that the Japan- 
ese have brought up large quantities to For- 

[69] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

mosa and other Japanese territory. They now 
have control of the port of Tsing-tao, formerly 
controlled by the Germans, and have brought in 
quantities both of opium and morphine. This 
illicit traffic has been fostered by military 
officials who have learned to use the drug. Their 
soldiers and messengers escape the police with- 
out being searched. Japanese traveling mer- 
chants and those opening shops in Chinese cities 
have also aided in keeping supplies for the ad- 
dicts. Only international pressure can stop this 
evil. So long as the Japanese control railroad 
lines and send steamers up the rivers, the Chi- 
nese are helpless. The entire Customs force at 
Tsing-tao are Japanese. We cannot believe that 
the other nations of the world will stand by and 
see China once more enslaved by a drug which 
so short a time ago she heroically abolished 
from the land. 

The story of this wonderful battle against 
the opium curse has shown the moral fibre in 
the Chinese people. The original suppression 
hit a great number of the officials. It cut off a 
tremendous slice of the nation's revenues. It 
struck the poor farmer who grew the poppy. 
During these last years, when the country has 
been dominated by the military, a group of men 
who have shown themselves lacking in patriot- 
ism, who have weakened the country and ravaged 
the people for selfish ends, who for like selfish 
ends have forced ruinous loans upon the gov- 
ernment in order that they might grow rich, 

[70] 



THE PASSING OF THE OPIUM CURSE 

the common people have been completely dis- 
couraged and helpless in promoting reform 
measures. Yet it is very noticeable that opium 
had no longer any attraction for them and very 
few of those not in official or military life have 
returned to the use of the drug. 



[71] 



THE MISSIONARY AND THE REVOLUTION 

There is no doubt that Christian propa- 
ganda in China had much to do with bringing 
about the Revolution of 1911. Christianity is 
democratic in its teaching and spirit. As the 
missionary preached of Christ, he preached of 
the equality of men. "All ye are brethren," said 
Christ. In building up the mission schools the 
teacher made no distinction between the chil- 
dren of the rich, of the educated and of the poor. 
The doctor in his hospital sought to treat all 
patients alike. He felt he was there to heal the 
sick whether the patient be prince or pauper. If 
any distinction was made it was favorable to the 
lower classes rather than the higher. The 
former class early sought the medicial ministry 
which the missionary came to give. Dr. Macklin, 
so loved by people far and wide in the lower 
Yangtse Valley, gained that love through taking 
in thousands of outcasts and refugees and heal- 
ing their diseases free of charge. 

The influences of the Kingdom of God reach 
far beyond the doors of the church, even beyond 
the personal touch of the missionary. Patients 
told the story of their healing to their friends. 

[72] 



THE MISSIONARY AND THE REVOLUTION 

School children brought the Christian influences 
into the home of their parents. Portions of the 
Scriptures have gone far beyond the trails of 
the missionaries. So when the Revolution 
broke out it was found that this spirit of de- 
mocracy manifested itself in far corners of the 
country. There was not lacking evidence that 
many of the young leaders in the new army 
knew of God and how to reach Him. People 
flocked to the Christian chapels rather than to 
their temples for help. The Christian doctors 
were asked to organize Red Cross work and 
money was not lacking them for support. 

In other ways the influence of Christianity 
was equally marked. In the wars of the past, 
armies lived upon the land through which they 
passed. They gave little thought to paying for 
the food they ate. They took what they liked 
from the homes. The inhabitants were thank- 
ful if their houses were left standing and they 
themselves were spared. Conquerors weakened 
their enemies by slaughtering the inhabitants 
of their country. It was a matter of course to 
burn a place after it had been looted. If they 
spared a man it was to make him a slave. If 
they saved a woman it was for immoral pur- 
poses. This has been true all over the world 
and not less so in the Orient. 

The last great rebellion in China took place 
only seventy years ago. It was a rebellion 
against the corrupt Manchu Dynasty. A Chinese 

[73] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

in the South who had come slightly in touch 
with missionaries believed himself called of God 
to rid the land of the Manchus and of idolatry. 
He dreamed dreams and saw visions. The op- 
pressed and restless in increasing numbers 
flocked to his standard. At first worship to God 
was daily conducted in his camps. In his pro- 
gress northward towards the Yangtse River he 
met with little opposition, and when real battles 
raged his troops were invariably victorious. 
Success inflated his judgment of himself and he 
took the title of Brother of Christ and later 
Brother of God. When his armies reached and 
took Nanking he set himself up as the emperor 
of a new dynasty with that city as his capital. 
From then on his army became a lawless body, 
robbing, burning and murdering at will. The 
country, for many miles around Nanking, on 
both sides of the Yangtse, was devastated and 
left desolate. There was no thought of protect- 
ing innocent people. The horrors of those days 
have been passed on from father to son down 
to the people of the present. Ignorant mothers 
have frightened their children to stillness by 
telling them that some of those evil leaders 
would get them if they did not stop their noise 
and go to sleep. 

Not only in story but in ruins has the work 
of the "long-haired rebels" been perpetuated. 
The regions of eastern Anhwui, of which the city 
of Chuchow is center, is one of the most thinly 
populated districts in all eastern China. The 

[74] 



THE MISSIONARY AND THE REVOLUTION 

former inhabitants were driven out or killed. 
After the rebellion had been put down, those 
still living came back to reconstruct their homes 
from the ruins. Today the population is not 
more than fifty per cent of what it was before 
the region was devastated. Of these not more 
than twenty per cent are descendants from the 
former inhabitants. The land has been slowly 
repopulated by poor people who drifted in be- 
cause they heard that there was much land there 
with but few people to work it. 

In the Revolution in 1911 and the Rebellion 
of 1913, Nanking was again one of the storm 
centers. The city had to withstand a siege each 
time and each time the armies of conqueror and 
conquered flowed over the country north of the 
river, past the city of Chuchow which is only 
thirty miles from the riverside. With numer- 
less piles of ruined villages and farm homes 
still to be seen all through this country and 
with every person more or less familiar with 
the stories of the ravages of the Taiping Re- 
bellion, one has no trouble in imagining how the 
approach of this new war struck terror to the 
hearts, especially of the women and children. 

At Hankow, where much of the hardest 
fighting occurred, the Imperial troops at first 
felt themselves free to loot and ravage as had 
been done in all previous wars. It was just such 
acts which precipitated the first battle there. 
The Revolutionary troops were enraged at the 
brutality and went into battle to stop it. They 

[75] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

made it known in proclamation and in deed that 
they were fighting to protect the innocent and 
to build up a free nation. The Imperial troops 
were much better organized and had the best 
of most of the fighting. It was they who set fire 
to and burned up the large part of the native 
city at Hankow. Such outrages did more to turn 
the country against the Manchus than even the 
indignities suffered through the years. 

Both sides issued proclamations command- 
ing that protection be given all foreigners. Prob- 
ably for the first time in their history, the war- 
ring elements valued the influence of foreign 
governments and sought their approval. In ad- 
dition to this the Revolutionists gave out word 
that punishment would be dealt out to those who 
dealt unfairly with merchants and others from 
whom they purchased supplies. Those who gave 
way to slaughter of the innocent, robbery, burn- 
ing and ravaging would be heavily punished. 

Proclamations, however, could do little to 
quiet the fears of the common people. When 
their homes were in the path of armies, they 
might at any time find a battle raging about 
their doors. They knew war by the stories of 
the past. When the waves of warring armies 
began actually to sweep toward their villages 
and cities, their terror was pitiful indeed. 
Country people rushed into the cities, bring- 
ing their salable goods, and seeking to turn 
them into cash. Families moved into the city 
to gain the protection of the ancient walls. City 

[76] 



THE MISSIONARY AND THE REVOLUTION 

people poured into the country districts, think- 
ing they might thus escape the path of marching 
armies. Grain, animals and fowl were sold for 
a third of their value. In cities which contained 
resident missionaries, who believed it their duty 
to remain if possible, the sight of these for- 
eigners going about their usual tasks calmed, 
to some extent, the fears of the people. Nothing 
frightened them more than to hear that the mis- 
sionaries were leaving the place. 

We do not know who were the initiators of 
the Chinese Red Cross Society. Mission hos- 
pitals, however, did not wait for those at a dis- 
tance to start up a national organization. With- 
out having time or opportunity to consult with 
others, these hospitals hoisted the Red Cross 
flag and began training men for relief corps. 
Mission schools had to be closed for lack of 
pupils; no aggressive work could be done in the 
churches. So other missionaries threw in their 
lot with the doctors in organizing for this emer- 
gency. Old style Chinese doctors were absolutely 
helpless before such a task. Only western 
trained men knew how to care for the wounded. 
The number of Chinese who had sufficient train- 
ing for this kind of work was comparatively 
small, so the missionary doctors found their 
services much in demand. 

When the plan and purpose of the Red Cross 
movement were explained to the influential 
Chinese whose homes were in the path of danger, 
they immediately grasped the opportunity. They 

[77] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

saw a possibility of saving their homes as well 
as the lives of wounded soldiers. They knew 
that in other countries armies usually respected 
the Red Cross flag. They heard that the lead- 
ing Chinese generals had instructed their soldiers 
to do likewise. They reasoned that where the 
Red Cross flag flew the place ought to be fairly 
safe, so they readily gave funds for the work. 
They willingly filled such offices and did such 
duty as lay in their power. Their sons could 
help in first aid and their daughters could sew 
and make bandages. Requests began to come 
in for the privilege of storing boxes of valuable 
things in the attics either of the foreign hospital 
or houses. Almost without the knowledge of 
the foreigners the deserted school rooms filled 
up with women and children from country Chris- 
tian homes. Relatives came in with them. 
Local women began to feel that the foreign com- 
pounds would be good places to which to fiee 
should special danger arise. 

The Yangtse and Han Rivers separate the 
three cities of Wuchang, Hankow and Hanyang. 
Here are located a half dozen mission hospitals, 
and many schools and churches. These hospitals 
opened their doors for caring for the wounded. 
Relief corps worked behind both sides and 
gathered in all the wounded they could handle. 
When the hospital buildings overflowed, churches 
and schools were pressed into service. The for- 
eign and Chinese Christian women led the work 
of making bandages and dressings. There were 

[78] 



THE MISSIONARY AND THE REVOLUTION 

days when a thousand wounded and sick were 
being cared for at one time by these inadequate 
emergency forces. 

Chang Hsun, an Imperial leader and a warm 
supporter of the Manchus, suddenly moved his 
forces across the river from Pukow to Nanking 
and took the city out of the hands of the waver- 
ing Tartar general and viceroy, refusing to 
surrender the place without a struggle. Revolu- 
tionary troops who had been recruited from 
Kiangsu Province all the way down the coast 
to Canton, gathered in force along the Shanghai- 
Nanking Railroad, determined to drive all Im- 
perial forces out of this part of the Yangtse 
Valley. Back of them were mission hospitals 
in Chinkiang, Soochow, and Shanghai. Relief 
corps followed them, gathering up and taking 
the wounded back to these hospitals by special 
trains. 

Nanking had but two available hospitals 
and Chang Hsun's wounded, together with 
wounded citizens, quickly filled these. His at- 
tempt to hold the city was a foolish one, for the 
Revolutionists numbered many times his forces 
and were well equipped with guns and ammuni- 
tion. Here again the missionary stepped into 
the emergency and determined to stop the use- 
less slaughter if possible. Dr. Macklin, into 
whose hospital were pouring most of the 
wounded soldiers, had entre to Chang Hsun's 
headquarters, so took it upon himself to urge 
surrender of the city. At first the commander 

[79] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

refused. There was his own honor, that of the 
Manchu government and the lives of resident 
Manchus to be considered. But Dr. Macklin with 
Messrs. Brown, Garrett, and others, offered to 
act as middlemen between the forces. 

The missionaries were carrying other heavy 
burdens besides caring for wounded soldiers. 
Their schools and churches were full of refugees, 
numbers of whom were being protected from 
Chang Hsun himself. Even two or three years 
before the Revoution numbers of young men had 
begun to rid themselves of the hateful queues, a 
long time badge of servitude to the Manchus. 
Chang Hsun had risen from the position of a 
cart driver to a general in the army wholly 
through favor of the former Empress Dowager, 
and he was most loyal to the Manchus. The 
cutting off of queues by the younger generation 
Chang Hsun took as a direct affront to the gov- 
ernment. A number of such young men in 
Nanking had been seized and beheaded; nothing 
but the walls of mission compounds protected 
many others. So the missionaries had double 
reason for wishing the Imperial troops to 
evacuate the city. 

Finally the general made suggestions as 
to what terms must be granted if he were to 
leave the place. Immediately the missionaries 
who were acting as middlemen found a way to 
visit the camp of the Revolutionists and begin 
negotiations. The safety of the common people 
lay in the success of these men. It took more 

[80] 



THE MISSIONARY AND THE REVOLUTION 

than one such journey to complete the parley. 
Finally the Revolutionists guaranteed safety to 
all Manchus who might have to remain in the 
city and also rearranged their troops so Chang 
Hsun could escape with such troops as wished 
to follow him. One regiment was left behind 
and these, again under the leadership (and pro- 
tection) of the missionaries, turned over the city 
to the Revolutionists. Although the lives and 
property of the Manchu residents had been 
guaranteed, so little faith had they in any 
soldiers that many of the women threw them- 
selves into moats and wells rather than to trust 
themselves to the hands of the Chinese, while 
the men dynamited a portion of their residential 
district. 

Dr. Lucy Gaynor, for years in charge of the 
Quaker Hospital for women, took it upon her- 
self to investigate conditions of the Manchu 
women left in the city. A large number of them 
had been reduced to beggary. The Christian 
churches following her suggestions, opened up 
kitchens, found v/ork for some and did every- 
thing within their power to help these un- 
fortunates. Typhus fever broke out among them 
and Dr. Gaynor arranged isolation rooms and 
went daily to minister to them. The disease 
took hold upon her and she gave up her life, 
but her death was not in vain. Neither was 
the work of the other missionaries. It gained 
for Christianity the gratitude of Chinese and 
Manchus and drew many into the Church. 

[81] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

Chang Hsun, with some six thousand of his 
troops, fled across the river. The Tientsin- 
Pukow Railroad had had many interruptions 
during the seige of Nanking. Preparing for just 
such an emergency, they had sent most of their 
rolling stock up the line, so as to prevent its 
being commandeered by either party. Chang 
Hsun pushed his men forward to Chuchow where 
he found enough cars to entrain half of his 
troops. Hoping to persuade the foreign engi- 
neers to send up more cars, he held his men for 
a day at the Chuchow station. 

Chuchow had already had its gates shut and 
barred for two days. The Imperial troops did 
not try to enter it as their objective was to put 
a greater distance between themselves and any 
Revolutionists who might pursue. They con- 
tented themselves with taking such food as could 
be found in homes and stores outside the city 
walls, and then gathered about the railroad 
station to await the coming of the expected 
trains. Thus the men were limited to the sec- 
tion around the south and east gates. 

While they were thus gathering, a small 
body of newly recruited Revolutionists from the 
country west of the city, approached from that 
side. The city elders had known of the gather- 
ing of this force, but had sent urgent word for 
them to remain out of the district, at least until 
Chang Hsun's men had passed by. They came 
on, however, to find the gates barred against 
them also. As there was no defensive body in 

[82] 



THE MISSIONARY AND THE REVOLUTION 

the city, they found it an easy task 'to scale the 
walls and open the West Gate and enter the city. 
The Imperialists could have done the same had 
they so desired, but they were soldiers of the old 
type, perfectly willing to loot and ravage. With 
a revolutionary force in the city they would 
have had sufficient excuse for so doing and it was 
indeed fortunate that they did not attempt to 
enter the walls. 

The commander of the Revolutionary 
troops had hardly expected to come so suddenly 
into such close quarters with Imperial troops. 
His men had almost no modern equipment and 
were but raw recruits. Since he was in the city, 
he trusted, as the citizens did, that Chang Hsun 
would give orders for his trains to start north. 
As the afternoon of that day wore on and there 
was no sign of starting trains, and more Im- 
perial troops kept arriving, all the people within 
the city, soldiers and citizens alike, began to fear 
that Chang Hsun had changed his mind and 
would demand entrance. 

In desperation the Revolutionary leader 
and city heads sent for the two missionaries who 
were in the city. Would the foreigners be will- 
ing to go over the wall and urge Chang Hsun 
to start his troop trains northward? The people 
in the city, especially the women, were in an 
extreme stage of fear. With every rumor that 
had gone afloat that day, numbers of them had 
rushed each time to the hospital for safety. 
The citizens' request was granted and the mis- 

[83] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

sionaries v/ent over the wall. Chang Hsun was 
met, Information as to extra cars was given him, 
and, as dusk settled over the city, the trains 
started for the north. That act broke down all 
barriers which had existed between the Chinese 
and foreigners. The foreigners have ever since 
been recognized as citizens of the place and 
called into co-operation in all new movements 
originating in the municipality since that date. 
Similar incidents took place in many cities in 
China, placing missionaries in entirely new re- 
lations with the Chinese. 

One of the oldest evangelists in the Yangtse 
Valley, an early convert under Dr. Macklin, had 
been called to Ichang previous to the outbreak of 
the Revolution, for special meetings. He was 
caught in the net of the war at Hankow and re- 
mained through much of the fighting there. He 
saw the beginning of the Red Cross work, the 
relief corps that went out behind the fighting 
men and brought in the wounded, also gathering 
in non-combatants and protecting them. Re- 
turning home by way of Nanking, the evangelist 
found a city filled with gratitude because of the 
work missionaries had done in saving lives and 
homes. He returned to his home in Chuchow 
and was himself used in pacifying rival Revolu- 
tionary leaders and in maintaining peace in the 
city, after the passing of Chang Hsun. Members 
of the city council who came in requesting aid 
in some task which was beyond their powers 
and influence, stood up and bowed their heads 

[84] 



THE MISSIONARY AND THE REVOLUTION 

while this old soldier of the Cross prayed for 
the leadership and counsel of God. Then they 
saw him go forth in company with the mission- 
aries and perform deeds which they had been 
unable to do and which the missionaries would 
probably have been unable to perform without 
his ready wit and wise tongue. No wonder these 
city leaders afterwards said, *'God and you saved 
the city.'* 

In their relationships to the Red Cross there 
was a great difference between Christian and 
non-Christian. Rich and educated men, men 
who ordinarily had much influence, thought of 
the organization only as a means for saving their 
homes and property. Towns and villages wanted 
to organize branches so they might float the flag 
over their districts. Members prized Red Cross 
badges, not as a sign of service, but as a pro- 
tective charm. In their minds the saving of 
others was secondary. 

On the other hand, numbers of the Chris- 
tians grasped the spirit of unselfish service. 
The wife of a country preacher heard of a young 
man who, on his way home, had been waylaid 
by robbers, bands of whom had sprung up in 
great numbers in this disordered time. Passing 
soldiers, finding him half dead were about to 
put him out of his misery when this Christian 
woman intervened. She found some carriers, 
made a rude stretcher, and brought him twenty 
miles to the nearest hospital. Her faith was re- 
warded by his ultimate recovery to full health. 

[85] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

Retreating Imperial soldiers, discouraged 
and scattered, often sold their arms and ammuni- 
tion and, throwing off their uniforms, escaped 
back to their own homes. These modern 
weapons frequently fell into the hands of un- 
scrupulous men who seized this time of disorder 
to become robbers. Wounded country farmers, 
whose homes had been attacked by such men, 
were picked up by the country pastors or Chris- 
tians and brought to the hospitals. Chinese 
Christians through unsettled portions of the 
country were most faithful to their posts and 
won the hearts of the people by this work of 
saving the wounded and distressed. No longer 
were they held in derision by others of their 
race, but were welcomed as messengers of love 
and service. Patients thus brought to the hos- 
pital made willing listeners to the Gospel, and 
those able to read spent much time in studying 
the Scriptures put into their hands. 

Some of the Revolutionary soldiers had been 
educated in mission schools. During days of 
fierce fighting they learned to pray very sincerely 
for victory. This faith in God took hold upon 
their comrades who, when sent to the hospital 
for healing, listened eagerly to the preaching in 
chapel or ward. It often took courage to confess 
faith in Christ, but it was not an infrequent 
thing to hear these soldiers make such public 
confession. 

The troops frequently were quartered in 
schools and temples. But it was found that 

[86] 



THE MISSIONARY AND THE REVOLUTION 

much space was taken up in the temples by the 
presence of idols. So, at Nanking, a special day 
was set for pulling down the idols from their 
thrones. Hundreds of these brick and dirt 
figures were scattered about the adjoining fields, 
giving them the appearance of a battle field 
strewn with dismembered bodies. For those 
Chinese who had substituted faith in the one 
God for faith in idols it was a time of rejoicing; 
for those who had no other belief than in figures 
of wood and stone, it was a day of trembling. 
Missionaries viewed the proceedings with 
troubled hearts, for men and women, they knew, 
must believe in something. Would these un- 
taught, despairing masses be reached? Would 
something worse than idols be their religion? 
During the succeeding years, some temples have 
been refilled with new idols; priests, however, 
are fewer in number. 

In our section people have idol processions 
and hold special days for idol worship, but super- 
stition still has a strong hold upon the masses. 
We find that the name of God has been added to 
the gods of whom they speak. Dimly farmers be- 
gin to believe that God has something to do with 
their crops. Pew of them read. There is no in- 
centive to attend meetings where they might 
gather fresh information or knowledge. If ever 
the masses are led to Christ, we must go to them 
carrying the Word to their very homes. 

The days immediately following such times 
of excitement, uncertainty and fear brought both 

[87] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

gladness and sadness to Christian workers. Idols 
had proved their uselessness and more people 
flocked to the churches. The missionary and 
Christian stood in a new place among them. 
Many expressions of gratitude were brought or 
sent to them; some thirty missionaries, for ex- 
ample, who were active in Red Cross work about 
Nanking were decorated by the Revolutionary 
general who took that city. Missionaries in 
other cities where trouble came, were given 
similar recognition. Stone tablets were placed 
in hospitals, lacquered boards hung in chapels, 
and beautiful scrolls on the walls of the mis- 
sionary's own home. Those giving such recogni- 
tion wished it understood that they were not only 
thanking the missionaries themselves but de- 
sired that their own children might not forget 
the salvation which had come to their homes, 
but might keep in grateful memory these guests 
from over the seas who had so freely risked their 
lives for the saving of the people. 



[88] 



VI 
THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE REVOLUTION 

The days following the Revolution were like 
an ever changing kaleidoscope. New and Young 
China were in the ascendency and were ready to 
set the pace for all others. The reforms and 
changes they planned, tried, and discarded re- 
minded one of the words at the end of an auc- 
tioneer's advertisement: "Too numerous to men- 
tion." Any description of these changes must be 
colored by the conditions in the locality in which 
the observer was stationed. Eastern and south- 
ern China were probably more affected than 
other parts. Interior places move more slowly. 
The north, in fact, was still under the spell of the 
old regime. 

Daily an indefinite variety of new or resur- 
rected clothing was seen on the streets. The 
patterns were borrowed anywhere from the dis- 
tant sages to the most extreme followers of 
foreign styles. This new era was frequently 
spoken of as the revival of the days of Han, the 
dynasty which ruled China in the days of Christ. 
The Chinese look back to that time as the golden 
age of the Orient. Young men began to appear 
on the streets in flowing garments and peculiar 

[89] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

hats. The only thing they lacked was beards. 
Foreign style clothing has been worn by young 
men in Shanghai and other coast cities for some 
years. Now "hand-me-downs" began to appear 
even in the interior. Men attended functions in 
clothing which, as far as fitting qualities were 
concerned, might have graced an American 
tramp. Collars with ready-tied neckties were 
put around the neck without a foreign shirt for 
attachment. Then the collars would appear to 
have a desire to see the country from all angles 
and would begin a trip around the neck, the 
necktie going along. Wiser Chinese went to 
foreign tailors and were properly fitted, and thus 
escaped making themselves ridiculous. Others, 
still wiser, continued to wear the conventional 
Chinese garments. The Chinese skull cap for a 
time disappeared, and foreign caps were much 
in evidence. Pith and cork hats were donned 
during the summer. Then the Chinese regained 
their sanity and former styles came back and 
have since held their ground. 

Many of the men however were determined 
to get rid of their queues. These were a badge of 
submission forced upon the Chinese by the 
Manchus when they conquered the country in 
1644. We have noted in a previous chapter that, 
even before the Revolution, some of the more 
adventurous spirits among the young men had 
cut off their queues. After the Revolution the 
students and new soldiers led the way, not only 
in cutting off their own queues, but those of any 

[90] 



THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE REVOLUTION 

common persons who came within reach of their 
bayonets or the scissors which many of them 
carried for the purpose. The gentry and official 
class had to follow suit. Even Yuan Shi-kai, al- 
though in the conservative stronghold of the 
north, had to yield to this popular demand. Most 
of the northern people held on to their queues 
long after they disappeared from the South, and 
today a majority of the common people still 
braid their hair and let it hang down their backs. 
People in the back country districts in the South 
found that if they wished to preserve their 
queues they must remain away from cities and 
towns in which soldiers were quartered. Those 
who had the temerity to journey as far into the 
strongholds of Young China as Nanking were 
sure to lose their queues before even getting 
across the Yangtse River. Some tried curling 
them under their caps and allowing the hair to 
grow over the entire head. But the new soldiers 
on the banks of the river found queue-cutting 
a most inspiring sport, and very little long hair 
escaped them. 

The soldiers adopted hair-cutting as a part 
of their work in the new China. We were at an 
up-country railroad station one day when a train- 
load of soldiers pulled in. Several country boys 
were standing about the platform watching the 
sights. Most of them still possessed their 
queues. One young officer, not yet out of his 
teens but puffed up with the importance of his 
office, stepped down from the train platform and 

[91] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

with a companion made a rush for the country 
boys. The boys made a dash for the open coun- 
try. Then the young officer pulled out a large 
revolver and commanded the boys to return. 
They saw some shears in the hands of the ac- 
companying soldiers, and fearing the shears as 
much as they did the revolver, were slow to 
obey the command. It looked rather serious for 
the country boys until, with an influential com- 
panion, we had the boldness to walk up to the 
soldiers and tell them to attend to their own 
business and not interfere in local affairs. The 
country boys were happy to escape from the 
shears and doubtless were more careful after- 
wards how they loitered around the station. The 
young officer was not happy, for he had lost what 
all Chinese — and people of most other nations 
— love most dearly, namely face, or pride. 

There was one division of the Chinese who 
still held on to their queues. This was the divi- 
sion under the command of Chang Hsun whom 
we described in his attempt to hold Nanking for 
the Manchus. He had not only retained the men 
who had fled with him but had industriously re- 
cruited many other long-haired young men. His 
force was sufficiently large and the country still 
so much in disorder that the government did not 
attempt to consider him an outlaw. He had 
grudgingly given his allegiance to the new order 
of things, but later events proved that this was 
merely to gain time and hold his own power. 
The very fact that he only recruited men who 

[92] 



THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE REVOLUTION 

still wore queues showed his allegiance to the 
old government. 

He gathered his increasing army about him 
in north Kiangsu and settled himself like an 
Oriental prince in regal splendor. The govern- 
ment had to furnish money to pay his soldiers. 
Since they had no means of counting the number 
of men he had, they had to take his word for it, 
and in consequence, paid him wages for whole 
regiments he did not have. Since he was de- 
pendent upon the government for his arms and 
ammunition they could control him there some- 
what. Likewise they could demand his co-opera- 
tion in any military activities needed. Since a 
large proportion of the troops he recruited were 
from a lawless part of the country where robbery 
was a frequent cure for short crops, there was 
more safety for the country when these soldiers 
were under military control, than when they 
were turned loose upon the countryside. 

These were the troops who, in the Rebellion 
of 1913, retook Nanking and for three days were 
allowed to loot at pleasure. Unhappily, in their 
mistreatment of the Nanking people, they were 
so careless as to kill three Japanese who had 
taken up residence and were doing business in 
the city. With this act as an excuse, the Japanese 
government brought pressure to bear and com- 
pelled the Chinese government to remove Chang 
Hsun and his forces to northern Kiangsu where 
they had been living for the intervening two 
years. It was then we were able to measure 

[93] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

somewhat the amount of goods they had stolen 
from the homes and stores of Nanking, for we 
saw whole train-loads of all kinds of goods which 
they openly took along with them. 

Although Chang Hsun was not present in 
the city in person during the looting, and entered 
no house as a thief and robber, he did not leave 
empty handed. In 1910 China had copied other 
nations and held a fine Exposition in Nanking. 
Very attractive buildings had been erected. Many 
modern inventions, along with many of China's 
ancient relics and more modern costly porce- 
lains and silks, had been on exhibit. The whole 
exhibit had been lighted with electricity, a special 
plant being imported for the purpose. When 
Chang Hsun returned to his old place in Hsu- 
chow-fu, he had this entire electric light plant 
taken back with him. It was set up in Hsu- 
chow-fu and gave light, not only for the palatial 
buildings he now erected, but was sufficient for 
other places used by his officers. He had it run- 
ning for a while, then, one night the wires be- 
came accidently crossed, short circuiting the 
current, and he saw his beautiful palace go up in 
flames. He himself escaped. This incident is 
somewhat aside from the subject of this chapter 
but was one of the interesting happenings of the 
early days of the Republic. 

For some reason, although the country was 
at peace and the new government was accepted 
by citizens and military, every division leader 
thought it necessary to recruit men. It certainly 

[94] 



THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE REVOLUTION 

was not done at the request of the government. 
Probably since northern military leaders, who 
had favored the Manchus, still held their com- 
mands and were recruiting men, the southern 
leaders felt it necessary to do the same. It was 
exactly what had been taking place among the 
nations in Europe for a much longer period. 

Following Chang Hsun's flight in 1911, a 
company of young soldiers who had been re- 
cruited from students, were placed in our city 
and remained with us for six months. Their 
captain at that time was but twenty years of 
age, but he showed wisdom in advance of many 
of his own age. It was through his strong work 
that our city suffered no ill during the coming 
and going of so many soldiers on the railroad 
line. Later he was given instructions to recruit 
men. Eighty per cent of his men gained com- 
missions and he was made a colonel. In all the 
cities and large towns in this part of China the 
same thing was being enacted. Drilling of the 
new troops went on throughout the day. Buglers 
disturbed our morning slumbers and sent us to 
bed at night. New buglers had to be trained. 
Their practicing was nerve racking to foreigners 
who had no choice but to listen to it sixteen 
hours a day. 

These soldiers had no work but their drill. 
Certain times each day they could leave their 
camp and wander about at will. Some of them 
made nuisances of themselves, and some officers 
were lax. Others in command were strict and 

[95] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

their men better behaved. Petty thieving was 
common in some regiments, which likewise 
enjoyed disturbing people who were going 
about their ordinary business. This, however, 
would not continue long before some offender 
would be caught by his superiors and be made 
to suffer for the sins of many of his fellow 
soldiers. The usual punishment was to bamboo 
the bare legs. Discharged in disgrace and left 
in a pitiful condition, the suffering would be 
brought to our hospital for treatment, his care 
paid for by sympathetic comrades. 

Groups of the soldiers could be seen at 
nearly every service in our churches. Sometimes 
they became annoying, as they knew nothing 
about the proprieties of the place. Noisily they 
stamped their way into the church, sat for a 
while and then noisily left. Since the earlier of- 
ficers welcomed the missionaries to their camps 
and gladly gave them opportunities to speak to 
the soldiers, it needed but a word to gain the co- 
operation of these officers in teaching their men 
to show decorum when attending services. In 
such cases special classes were formed for those 
who became fairly regular in attendance. Num- 
bers of the soldiers actually became Christians 
and, although they were later scattered far and 
wide, reports continually reached us which 
showed many of them were sincere in their pro- 
fession of faith. 

One serious difficulty loomed large in the 
days of reconstruction. Robbery became wide- 

[96] 




Shi Kwei Biao, 
A Great Chinese Evangelist 



THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE REVOLUTION 

spread. Disbanding or deserting soldiers often 
got away with their rifles and ammunition and 
turned robbers. Much of the Chinese army is 
made up of restless irresponsible spirits who, 
when not under authority, readily turn to spoil- 
ing unprotected farms and villages. Through 
eastern Anhwui there has for years existed a 
secret organization, which, while professing to 
have no other intention than that of mutual 
helpfulness, in reality control the robbery and 
thieving. Its leaders do not themselves go out 
with these maraudering bands, but they seek to 
protect and aid those who do the actual robbing 
when they fall into trouble with the government. 
These men became quite bold during the 
days when there was laxness of law and order, 
and began to terrorize larger towns. Later it 
was found that policemen, soldiers and railroad 
employees were numbered among their ranks. 
In Chuchow they began entering shops on the 
pretense of buying goods. They would inquire 
the price of their purchase, pay a small sum and 
tell the shopkeeper to charge the rest. Of course, 
such methods were a flagrant form of daylight 
robbery. The local magistrate, in desperation, 
finally arrested one of the worst offenders. At 
once the whole organization made it known that 
the magistrate would suffer for the act. One 
night the city gate was opened by a policeman 
in league with the robbers and a large force of 
them entered, looted the yamen and opened the 
prisons. The magistrate escaped to the soldiers' 

[97] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

barracks. There were but a handful of them to 
face such a robber band, but they had been 
through the war and boldly attacked the robbers. 
These lost their nerve and fled, losing a number 
of their men by the way. They seized an engine 
and some cars and made off into the country, 
burning a market town by the way. The magis- 
trate, as soon as cut wires were mended, tele- 
graphed for more soldiers, and when these came 
he swept the city and country clean of every man 
who was known to have been in any way con- 
nected with the secret organization. For the 
first time in many years country people breathed 
easy and went to sleep in peace. 

Educational changes began before the Revo- 
lution. In 1905 the Throne sent forth an edict 
which brought to an end the old educational 
system and inaugurated modern methods. Mis- 
sion schools had to a great extent been the fore- 
runners of this change. Especially was this true 
in regard to girls. As we have seen, the call for 
modern education sent thousands of young men 
hurrying to Japan to obtain a training for the 
new kind of schools. A few young women from 
rich or official homes were also sent. Some were 
able to go even to America and Europe. The 
government gave many grants to aid these in ob- 
taining the necessary normal training. These 
new schools had just begun when the Revolution 
burst upon the country and closed all schools 
in the regions affected. 

Mission schools quickly regained their 

[98] 



THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE REVOLUTION 

students, for taxes must be gathered before gov- 
ernment teachers could be paid. For several 
years It was difficult to fill the public treasury so 
the government schools waited, and the mission 
schools found themselves swamped with pupils. 
The Chinese had learned to trust the mission- 
aries and no longer opposed Christian teaching 
for their children. The publishing houses had an 
equally heavy task on their hands, for the gov- 
erment textbooks had all to be changed to con- 
form with the new ideas formulated by the found- 
ing of a republic. 

The government school teachers made 
heroic and patriotic efforts to reopen the schools 
and meet the new demands. Night schools 
sprang up. Free schools for poor children were 
opened. Educational associations were formed. 
Missionaries were invited as guests of honor to 
their meetings and their counsel was eagerly 
sought. They were asked to give aid in teaching 
normal classes for the teachers. The older 
teachers were ignorant of all such subjects as 
arithmetic, geography, music and physiology, 
and younger teachers had had little experience 
in managing schools. Often there arose con- 
flict between the two elements. Now the old 
style teacher is rapidly disappearing. Even his 
methods of teaching selections from the classics 
are antiquated and the new men have shown 
little patience with them. Since the government 
has been handicapped with rebellions and other 
quarrels, it has been constantly short of funds. 

[99] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

School funds were often used for other purposes, 
especially to pay the soldiers. Hence there has 
been a slow return in places to the old style 
school and private schools, and the teaching of 
the old classics in the old way is found in most 
cities. The government, however, has shown no 
intention of returning to this old style of educa- 
tion. 

The mission doctors had been much en- 
couraged by the way in which their Red Cross 
work had been supported. They had seized the 
opportunity to give suggestions for cleaner 
streets and homes. Greater efforts were made 
to make the hospital and foreign compounds 
models of sanitation. When now they offered to 
give occasional lectures along these lines whole 
schools would march to the lecture hall, which 
usually was the church building, to listen. The 
people began to talk about hygiene. Tuber- 
culosis has always made great inroads on 
Chinese health. The old teacher considered it 
dignified to walk with stooped shoulders for it 
showed him to be a scholar. But it also made 
him a consumptive. Lectures on this subject 
met with quick response. Physical training be- 
gan to be demanded by the schools. Boys and 
girls were, after long ages, given opportunity 
still to be boys and girls although they were on 
the road to education. Games, gymnastic ap- 
paratus and physical drill became a regular part 
of their education. 

"The poor ye shall always have with you" 

[100] 



THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE REVOLUTION 

is literally true of old China. Flood, drought 
and locusts have taken annual toll of crops. 
Lack of shipping communications stopped all 
plans to relieve any district affected. If famine 
was too heavy upon the land the government 
might remit the taxes for the year. In desperate 
cases the government might issue an order for 
opening soup kitchens. The kitchens were not 
opened in the immediate famine region but in 
such cities to which the famine sufferers drifted. 
Famine was the common lot of multitudes living 
in southern Shantung and northern Kiangsu. 
Sufferers usually took the route of the Grand 
Canal down to Chinkiang or came overland 
through eastern Anhwui to Nanking. Our city 
of Chuchow is on this latter route. Indeed this 
region which had been depopulated by the Taip- 
ing Rebellion has been largely repopulated by 
such groups of famine sufferers. There are large 
tracts of land here government owned or priv- 
ately controlled, still uncultivated. 

Following the Revolution, leaders in the 
Chuchow Christian Church began pressure upon 
the new and friendly officials to open up such 
vacant land for the poor. A wide strip of land 
circling the entire city and lying between the 
moat and the city wall has long been a waste. 
One official did undertake to encourage silk 
culture and plant some mulberry trees. Within 
a couple of years refugees had broken these 
down and pulled up the very roots for fuel. The 
local Chinese pastor seized upon the idea of 

[101] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

organizing a small company and putting these 
refugees to cultivating this waste piece. It was 
a mark of the confidence now shown towards 
the church that request for this land was im- 
mediately granted, a nominal rental being 
charged. Later the moat itself was stocked with 
fish and now yields a handsome return each 
year. 

At the very time Chang Hsun with his 
troops fled northward from the soldiers of the 
Revolution a famine was desolating the land 
through which he passed. The Revolutionary 
soldiers who followed him up were halted by 
an armistice and encamped in the famine 
regions. They were fed by a well organized 
commisariat but people around them were dying 
of starvation, and appealed to the soldiers for aid. 
They offered their children to whomsoever would 
give them a small amount of money or food in 
return. By such means both parents and chil- 
dren, though separated, were saved. Some six 
hundred boys and girls were thus bought by 
southern soldiers with the expectation of using 
them as servants. Some of the girls would 
doubtless be raised to enter lives of immorality. 
When these soldiers were shifted back to Nan- 
king, the people there objected to having these 
northern children taken back with the soldiers to 
the South. They took over the entire body of 
children and started an orphanage in Nanking. 
It was one of the first to be handled successfully 
by the Chinese. An educated woman of fine ex- 

[102] 



THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE REVOLUTION 

ecutive ability was found and placed in charge. 
This place played a large part in the 1913 Rebel- 
lion when it was placed for protection in the 
hands of the local Red Cross Society managed 
by the missionaries. This temporary protection 
by Christian men led the educated woman in 
charge to Christ and opened the institution to 
Christian teaching. 

Famine and poverty were not decreased by 
political changes in the land. Former magi- 
strates under the old rule openly bought their of- 
fice and taxes were farmed out to them as in the 
days of the publicans under Roman rule in 
Jerusalem. Men feared the yamen and found no 
justice there. The one ambition of unscrupulous 
office holders was to get rich, so they moved 
about frequently, bleeding the people as they 
went and exerting no beneficial influence toward 
local improvement. Following the establish- 
ment of the Republic, many patriotic young men 
who had fought battles for her found themselves 
in the possession of offices of trust in the land. 
But so deeply had the practice of bribery been en- 
trenched in the minds of the unprincipled that 
the same illicit pressure was brought upon these 
young men, and numbers of them could not with- 
stand the temptation. 

A class much in sympathy with the Revolu- 
tion was the literati. Formerly proud and 
egotistical, they had been slowly led to see the 
weakness of the old government. They gave, in 
consequence, much encouragement to the Rev- 

[103] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

olution and the failure of the new type of magis- 
trate to withstand the old temptations, the fact 
that many of their own numbers were responsi- 
ble for these failures, was a crushing blow to 
their hopes. They began to see that the work 
of founding a republic was not to be done in a 
day. They also began to realize that they them- 
selves must change if it were to be accomplished. 
Students from America had given them glowing 
descriptions of that progressive country and they 
had thought that with the wave of a wizard's 
wand their own country could be transformed 
into a similar condition of prosperity. There 
are few countries where King Habit holds sway 
with such power as in China. To be sure, the 
people had broken with opium, but it was 
another thing to break with idleness, parasitism, 
selfishness and gambling. 

They began to realize the need of universal 
education, the necessity of training a host of 
teachers and the importance of the extension of 
their educational system until every child as well 
as every adult had been taught the privileges and 
duties pertaining to citizenship. They had their 
eyes opened to the necessity of educating the 
women. They found old conservatism most 
strongly entrenched in the hearts of their wives 
and mothers. They themselves might throw off 
their belief in idols but superstition held sway 
among the older women. But the young girls 
were as anxious for education as the boys. They, 
too, ran to extremes and frequently brought 

[104] 



THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE REVOLUTION 

criticism upon themselves. Single lady mission- 
aries began to find themselves in demand. Mis- 
sion schools for girls were carefully guarded 
and their graduates soon found favor with the 
people. The contrast between these schools and 
government girls' schools was striking, and de- 
cidedly to the merit of the mission schools. 

Although they did not push themselves into 
places where they were not wanted, the mission- 
aries sought to be helpful, to give counsel, and to 
spend themselves for the good of the people. 

Money was at times placed in their hands 
to carry out some improvement, and positions 
of leadership were often offered them. They 
were asked to aid in and to oversee many kinds 
of tasks. These new lines of activity threatened 
to absorb their entire time to the detriment of 
their definite task of preaching the Gospel. On 
the other hand they were almost daily in homes 
and among associations where men frankly 
nsked questions concerning Christianity, so they 
soon found themselves preaching in a new and 
more telling way. They discovered that to do 
these extra tasks opened the way to hitherto 
closed hearts and minds. Unexpected auditors 
came singly and in groups into the church and 
its services. 



[105] 



VII 

THE REPUBLIC'S POLITICAL DEEDS 

The social dangers in China have been so 
strongly influenced by the political conditions 
that one needs to have a knowledge of the latter 
to understand the former. For this reason we 
are taking a little time to outline the political 
events which have taken place since the over- 
throw of the Manchu government. 

We must remember that the Manchus had 
discouraged the introduction of western methods 
of education. They had forbidden public as- 
semblies. The gaining of wealth and position 
was the one ambition which inspired boys to 
study and men to struggle. Official position was 
to them a stepping stone. For ages Chinese life 
had centered about the family rather than the 
community. Sons, to perpetuate the family 
name, were desired. If one wife bore no sons, 
another wife was taken. So strong became the 
bonds of family life that a man who was able 
to gain wealth and influence found poor relatives 
of several generations looking to him for sup- 
port. In this way an unbelievably large portion 
of the Chinese population had become parasitic 
in relation to society. Even the heads of well- 

[106] 



THE REPUBLIC'S POLITICAL DEEDS 

to-do households had a tendency to turn the re- 
sponsibilities over to their sons when these were 
old enough to shoulder it. The father expected 
his sons to support him as he had supported his 
own father. Men learned to work when com- 
pelled to but were ready to relax as soon as they 
could shift the burden. All of this tendency to 
idleness has created a vicious habit among the 
people. New projects often arouse their en- 
thusiastic support, only to fail when their en- 
thusiasm quickly wanes. Hence most of their 
recent projects have brought no fruit for lack of 
faithful, steady support. Troubles in the new 
government have been not a little due to this 
vicious habit of allowing energies and enthus- 
iasm to be dissipated in an exceedingly short 
time. 

Yuan Shi-kai, the first President of the Re- 
public gained his political influence before the 
overthrow of the Manchus. In 1898 he held a 
position in Peking as chief of the palace guard. 
The Emperor took him in confidence and sought 
to overthrow the power of the Empress Dowager. 
Yuan betrayed the trust and a famous coup d'etat 
resulted. The Emperor never forgot this, and 
when he passed away he left instructions with 
the new Prince Regent who, at the first oppor- 
tunity, sent Yuan back to private life in dis- 
grace. When the Revolution broke out in 1911 
there was no one left in official circles in Peking 
who was strong enough to handle the situation. 
The Prince Regent was, therefore, compelled to 

[107] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

recall Yuan to power. Yuan refused to come 
until the Prince agreed to put absolute power 
into his hands. 

Yuan Shi-kai's oldest son, then but just out 
of his teens, reached Peking ahead of his father. 
He freely and openly boasted that, when his 
father came to the capital, the Manchus would 
see the end of their reign, the Revolutionists 
would be compelled to elect his father President 
of the new Republic and, in due season, his father 
would restore a monarchical form of govern- 
ment with himself as the new Emperor. Friends 
stopped the young man's talk as soon as they 
could get hold of him. Later events have shown 
that he was evidently giving away the plans 
which his father purposed to carry out. 

Yuan Shi-kai reached Peking in November, 
1911. Fighting, so far, had been chiefly around 
the three Wu-han cities, Wuchang, Hanyang, and 
Hankow, the most widely known. The three 
towns are situated at the junction of the Han 
and Yangtse Rivers, six hundred miles inland 
from Shanghai, and the Peking-Hankow Rail- 
road connects them with the Capital. The Im- 
perial troops had burned the native city of Han- 
kow, driving the Revolutionary troops across 
the Yangtse. Had they followed up their suc- 
cesses there, the Revolutionary army would un- 
doubtedly have been scattered. Yuan Shi-kai, 
however, was now in control of the Peking Gov- 
ernment and held back their troops. He de- 
clared for peace and asked the Revolutionists to 

[108] 



THE REPUBLICS POLITICAL DEEDS 

accept an armistice and appoint delegates to 
discuss peace terms. 

The Revolutionary party did not respond at 
once. Nearly the entire country had now risen 
against the Manchu Government. Chang Hsun, 
the Imperial leader who had tried to hold Nan- 
king, was driven across the river and fled north- 
ward, leaving the entire lower Yangtse Valley 
in the hands of the Revolutionists. Yuan Shi- 
kai sent representatives to Hankow to discuss 
peace terms. The Revolutionists received them 
and appointed delegates. Little was accom- 
plished for Yuan stood for a limited monarchy, 
with or without the Manchus in power, while the 
Revolutionists were uncompromisingly for a Re- 
public. While the discussion dragged slowly on, 
Sun Yat-sen suddenly arrived in China and was 
speedily elected President of the Republic, and 
on December 29, 1911, he took up his residence 
at Nanking, the proposed new capital. 

Yuan continued his negotiations, compelling 
the Manchus to give way step by step until, in 
the middle of February, they accepted the idea 
of a Republic and retired from the field. Sun 
Yat-sen saw that Yuan was the stronger man. 
In order to hasten peace he resigned his oifice in 
favor of Yuan. March 16, 1912, Yuan took the 
oath of office as the first President of the new 
Republic. The Republic was made to date from 
January 1st of the same year. President Yuan 
had been in office but a short time when distrust 
of him began to show itself in both the Chinese 

[109] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

literati and the foreigners who dwelt in China. 
They knew that in 1898 he had betrayed his 
Emperor. In 1911 he had betrayed the Manehus. 
They began to believe that, when the time was 
ripe, he would likewise betray the Republic and 
make himself Emperor. 

Brazil and Mexico early gave recognition 
to the new Republic, but it took the recognition 
of the United States in May, 1912, to set the 
country aflame with enthusiasm. We have re- 
marked that everywhere the stars and stripes 
were floating by the side of the new Republican 
flag. A Provisional Parliament had been organ- 
ized in Nanking. President Yuan gained his 
contention to have Peking still made the 
Capital of the country, so the Provisional Parlia- 
ment moved to that place. Since the public as- 
sembling of the people and the public discussion 
of political questions had been long forbidden, 
it was not surprising that the early parliamen- 
tary sessions were taken up with wranglings 
over petty questions. 

President Yuan knew that his office was 
none too secure. He labored patiently with 
Parliament and began to surround himself with 
trusted men of influence. Wherever he could he 
dismissed some military leader and placed one 
of his own men in the vacancy. Parliament 
realized that its first work was the making of a 
Constitution. The Committee for drawing up 
this document refused any aid from the Presi- 
dent and sought to draft a constitution which 

[110] 



THE REPUBLIC'S POLITICAL DEEDS 

would limit the power of the Chief Executive and 
make his acts amenable to Parliament. This 
was just what President Yuan did not intend to 
have. The country was short of funds and a 
group of international bankers proposed a loan, 
so he began negotiations without consulting 
Parliament. Opposition at once arose and he 
was warned that such a course would precipitate 
another civil war. Nevertheless he succeeded 
in getting a loan of twenty-five millions of 
dollars. But another act widened the cleavage 
between the President and the radical party. 
Sung Chiao-ren, the young but powerful leader 
of the Kuo-ming Party, when taking the train 
at Shanghai to return to Peking was shot and 
killed by an assassin. The murderer was 
captured and the investigation which followed 
found evidence pointing very strongly towards 
the guilt of officials close to the President. 

These three things, the Constitution, the 
Loan and the Sung Chiao-ren murder, stirred 
up the more violent spirits in the South. General 
Li Lich-chun, Governor of Kiangsi, declared in- 
dependence against Yuan and rebellion began 
to spread. Nanking was again made head- 
quarters and an army was started up the Tient- 
sin-Pukow Railroad for the purpose of punish- 
ing the President. Unfortunately for them, 
ever since he had been driven out of Nanking 
two years before, Chang Hsun, the Imperial 
leader, was with his growing army planted on 
this railroad at Hsu-chow-fu in north Kiangsu. 

[Ill] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

He had no difficulty in turning back the rebels 
and then, with General Feng Kwoh-chang of 
Chihli Province, started for Nanking. In a few 
weeks his savage troops retook that city and had 
their long-desired revenge for having been 
driven out of it before. For three days they 
were allowed to loot the place. Once more 
history was repeating itself, and the innocent 
suffered for the guilty. 

With the collapse of the Rebellion of 1913, 
Yuan now felt himself strong enough to handle 
the country and work out his own desires. Some 
members of the Parliament, no doubt, sym- 
pathized with the Rebellion but none of them 
had taken part in it. The Kuo-ming Party was 
discredited by it and lost much of their influence. 
Yuan Shi-kai, up to this time, was acting as Pro- 
visional President awaiting the adoption of the 
Constitution. He now brought pressure to bear 
upon Parliament for the early election of a per- 
manent President. The laws governing such 
election were prepared early in October, 1913, 
and on the 6th, under pressure. Parliament 
elected Yuan Shi-kai as permanent President. 
Li Yuan-hung was elected as permanent Vice- 
President, no doubt to make President Yuan's 
victory less irritating to the radical party. 
Hitherto Vice-President Li had remained at 
Hankow with his own troops. President Yuan 
now prevailed upon him to move to Peking. 
Upon General Li's arrival he was assigned a 
residence in the same buildings where, in 1898, 

[112] 



THE REPUBLICS POLITICAL DEEDS 

the Emperor found himself placed for safe keep- 
ing while the Empress Dowager took the rule 
in her own hands. President Yuan at once 
placed another man over the troops at Hankow, 
thus taking all military power from the hands 
of the Vice-President and practically sending 
him into retirement. General Li had been the 
idol of the Revolutionary party, so this was 
another blow to their prestige. Vice-President 
Li quietly accepted his lot and through the 
troublous days of the next three years waited for 
a turn in political affairs. 

Yuan now felt himself strong enough to 
bring about the centralizing of power in his own 
hands. In November, 1913, he dissolved Parlia- 
ment on the pretext that members of the radical 
party had forfeited their right to membership 
in Parliament by secretly supporting the Rebel- 
lion. There were not sufficient members left for 
a quorum and no steps were taken to fill vacan- 
cies. The President spent the large part of 1914 
reorganizing the government to suit himself, al- 
ways working toward the restoration of the 
monarchical form. To show how little power 
he had beyond the walls of Peking it is neces- 
sary but to note that for nine months a robber 
chief robbed and burned at will through four of 
the provinces in Central China before he could 
be rounded up and shot. 

Meantime the European War had broken 
out. Japan, on August 27, 1914, declared war 
on Germany and demanded that Germany turn 

[113] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

over to her all the leased territory of Klaochow 
in Shantung. Thus was begun the attack upon 
the Republic from the outside. China asked to 
have a share in the taking of Kiaochow.. but 
Japan openly discouraged it. On September 
8th, Japanese troops were landed on Chinese 
soil and sixty days later Kiaochow was captured. 
Japan had promised to turn the territory back to 
China, but in the following January she suddenly 
issued the infamous Twenty-one Demands, 
which, if she had gained, would have put China 
hopelessly under her control and taken away all 
the Republic's independence. Due to interven- 
tion of other Powers, Japan modified these in 
her final ''ultimatum" but still gained very unjust 
control of many of China's industries and un- 
developed resources. 

By the autumn of 1915 Yuan felt himself 
strong enough to proceed with the setting up of 
the monarchy. In order to deceive other nations 
and lead them to believe that it was done by the 
unanimous desire of the people, very elaborate 
machinery was set up to have the affair balloted 
on by all the provinces. Compulsory measures 
were brought to bear upon thousands of citizens 
causing them to cast their vote according to 
secret instructions sent out. Reports of this 
iniquitous procedure came to the ears of the lega- 
tions in Peking and they sent in a protest. But 
the scheme was put through. When the ballot 
boxes were opened it was found that a unanimous 
vote had been sent in calling for the restoration 

[114] 



THE REPUBLICS POLITICAL DEEDS 

of a monarchical form of government and for 
Yuan Shi-kai as its Emperor. This was accom- 
plished in December, 1915. 

Two weeks after the announcement of this 
ballot, Yunnan in the far southwest, under 
General Tsai Ao, declared independence on the 
ground that Yuan Shi-kai had betrayed his trust. 
The remainder of the country remaining 
strangely quiet. Yuan announced that the new 
monarchy would date from January 1, 1916. The 
quietness broke, however, and not only all the 
South but many parts of the country spoke in no 
uncertain terms, denouncing their betrayal. 
Military governors in partnership with Yuan put 
their respective districts under martial law, but 
this did not stop the outpouring of the people's 
denunciation. Too late Yuan found he had mis- 
judged the temper of the Chinese, so on March 
22'nd he cancelled the monarchy. 

This did not satisfy the opposition. He had 
betrayed his trust. He must retire from the 
office of President. Some even urged that he 
must stand trial for crime. Northern soldiers 
were sent to put down the rebellion in the South- 
west. Intervening mountains made it a difficult 
task to push forward troops and their supplies. 
Yuan was again pinched for money, without 
which no war could be carried on. Telegrams 
and letters poured in on him from every part of 
the country, demanding that he retire from office. 
No man can successfully govern a country which 
thus openly impeaches him. He had to yield to 

[115] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

the pressure and on May 29, 1916, issued an edict 
agreeing to retire. 

The disappointment and subsequent nervous 
strain broke down President Yuan's health. For 
some time he had been unable to give personal 
attention to his work. During the week follow- 
ing his edict he became much worse and on the 
6th of June died. His name will go down to com- 
ing generations in ignominy. Had he been 
animated by the spirit of unselfish patriotism, 
instead of wanton selfishness, he would have been 
remembered as the great leader he was at first 
proclaimed to be. 

Vice-President Li, who through all these 
scenes, had remained quietly in the residence 
set apart for him, was now called to take the 
office of President. A feeling of relief passed 
over the entire country. The provinces tele- 
graphed their loyalty to him. They believed in 
him implicitly. On coming to Peking, General 
Li had been separated from his army, and 
another had taken the command. President Li 
was therefore not backed by soldiers, but by the 
good-will of the people. It was not unnatural, 
then, that the hardest work before him was to 
get the military to submit to civil power. 

Prom the day he took the office of President 
until the following March when the question of 
declaring war on Germany came before the 
country, the Chinese Republic sailed on very 
smooth waters. It looked as though at last the 
Chinese were going to obtain the longing of their 

[116] 



THE REPUBLICS POLITICAL DEEDS 

hearts and take a respected place with the na- 
tions of the world. The government was facing 
some hard questions, to be sure, and it was still 
difficult to find necessary funds to carry on its 
work. The people were clamoring everywhere 
for local self-government. Some were even de- 
manding that Confucianisin become the state 
religion. 

China was at the same time watching the 
course of the European war. She was also watch- 
ing America and Japan. Of Japan she stood in 
dread. America was China's example and, in 
the case of the war, as well as in other things, 
she was trying to imitate her example. When 
Wilson protested against the ruthless submarine 
warfare inaugurated by Germany, China also 
protested. A French transport with five hundred 
Chinese labor coolies had just been sunk by a 
submarine. Within a week after America had 
severed diplomatic relations with Germany, 
China did the same. 

There were other reasons for China's course. 
Two incidents in her foreign relations, one with 
Japan and one with Prance had recently shown 
China that it mattered little what demands other 
nations made on her, she had no power to resist 
them. Then, too, as the war had gone forward, 
China began to sympathize intelligently with the 
Allies who were championing the cause of 
weaker nations. China needed a place at the 
Peace table if she were going to be able to resist 
Japan's encroachments. Japan was openly 

[117] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

seizing the opportunity to make herself dictator 
in the Orient; she had entered the war for this 
purpose. America's influence with China was 
increasing and China wanted to be on the sajzift; 
side with America in the end. 

When, however. aji^'LttPT-Lpt was made to de- 
clare war against Germany, serious discord, 
which had been rippling beneath the surface, 
came to light. President Li was thoroughly 
democratic in his methods of governing the 
country, while his Premier, Tuan Chi-jui, was 
just as strongly military in training. He wanted 
to declare war without consulting Parliament. 
The President opposed this. The Premier called 
a council of the military party to back up his 
position. This aroused Parliament, and when 
the question of declaring war was brought be- 
fore them they refused to act until the Premier 
had been removed from office. Tuan Chi-jui re- 
fused to resign and the President removed him 
in an attempt to save trouble. But Tuan always 
had been a fighter and he did not now quietly re- 
tire. 

Two of the military, Chang Hsun and Nieh 
Shih-cheng, both occupying places along the 
Tientsin-Pukow Railroad with their armies, de- 
clared independence of the government. Presi- 
dent Li issued an edict which showed that he 
was not intimidated by their power. Neverthe- 
less, these men called for a meeting of the mili- 
tary at Tientsin. Some came, but discord soon 
appeared in their ranks. The American minister 

[118] 



THE REPUBLICS POLITICAL DEEDS 

sent a pacifying note to the government, calling 
attention to the fact that internal peace was 
far more important than the question of how 
war should be declared on another nation. 

A party in the military felt that Parliament 
was threatening to injure the prestige of the 
army and Chang Hsun took the lead in demand- 
ing the dissolution of Parliament. He threatened 
to lead his own men in an attack on the Capital 
if this was not done. The President had no 
loyal troops in Peking to back up the govern- 
ment. Chang Hsun actually went to Peking with 
a small force and compelled the President under 
such pressure to sign an edict for the dissolu- 
tion of Parliament. This was in June, 1917. 
Chang Hsun, on several occasions when visiting 
Peking had shown his loyality to the Manchus. 
He now, together with Kwang Yu-wei, a former 
adviser of the Emperor Kwang-hsu, on July 1st, 
brought the young Emperor out of retirement 
and informed him of his restoration to the 
throne of China. They went to President Li and 
demanded that he resign and acknowledge the 
young Emperor. He refused and was placed 
under guard. A detachment of soldiers from the 
Japanese Legation marched in and removed the 
President to their quarters. Later he escaped 
to Tientsin. 

Tuan Chi-jui now stepped out of retirement, 
met a gathering of military men and offered to 
lead their troops against Chang Hsun. Some 
50,000 so-called Republican troops soon sur- 

[119] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

rounded the Capital and drove Chang Hsun with 
his small army into the city. A couple of hun- 
dred well trained European or American troops 
could have brought Chang Hsun to sue for peace 
in a few hours. There were a few theatrical 
contests between the forces and, after a few 
weeks, Chang Hsun gave up the contest and took 
refuge in the Dutch Legation. Tuan Chi-jui 
entered the city and again assumed the office of 
Premier. General Li Yuan-hung saw the impos- 
sibility of overcoming the power of the military 
party and refused to continue as President. 
Vice-President Feng Kwoh-chang who had, with 
his army, kept his headquarters in Nanking, now 
came to Peking and was accepted as President. 
War against Germany was declared within 
a week after the new President took his office. 
There was no Parliament to discuss or hold up 
the question. There was no attempt for the time 
being by either the President or Premier or mili- 
tary men to reorganize a Parliament. A 
cleavage had been steadily growing between 
the progressive South and the Conservative 
North. Both sides had organized armies and the 
country had become one vast military camp. 
There had been no attempt to disband these 
armies. Even Chang Hsun's were taken over by 
Nieh Shih-cheng who thus increased his power. 
The government had to pay for all of these men, 
whether they supported it or not. The nation's 
taxes were largely used in this way. Even then 
the funds were insufficient, and the new President 

[120] 



THE REPUBLIC'S POLITICAL DEEDS 

began to seek foreign loans with which to pay 
the bills. President Feng at no time was able 
to be much more than a figure head. Premier 
Tuan held the reins of government. 

The South easily slipped back into a position 
of independence of the Peking government. The 
Southern provinces formed an alliance. The 
original Parliamentary members gathered at 
Canton and were able to command a quorum for 
business. A military committee was organized 
to direct government plans until they could once 
more conquer the North. Large armies were 
recruited, and from the South began a movement 
through Hunan toward Hankow. The North 
immediately sent down a large force to meet 
them and Hunan became a battlefield and the 
country was desolated. Missionaries, as usual, 
did all in their power to protect the innocent and 
care for the wounded. Their acts gained for 
them the love of the people and the respect of 
most of the soldiers but could not save the 
province. 

The brightest gleam which catone from this 
selfish warring was from the army of General 
Feng Yu-hsiang. This man is a Christian. 
Wherever his army was stationed he always 
sought the work of the Church among his men. 
His men were not allowed to injure the people. 
In the winter of 1918 he sent for a well-known 
Chinese evangelist and held meetings in his 
camps. Besides many soldiers, a number of his 
officers and one magistrate were baptized. Mean- 

[121] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

while he had distributed large numbers of 
Scriptures among his men. 

This needless war again drained the 
Treasury. Japan was approached for further 
loans and readily acceded as it meant valuable 
industrial and political concessions. At this 
time a well worked-up fear spread in political 
circles lest Germany should be able to march 
through disorganized Russia and Siberia and 
menace the safety of the Orient, more especially 
of Manchuria and Mongolia. China was hood- 
winked into forming an alliance with Japan to 
oppose this and was granted another large loan, 
giving great concessions to insure it. So deeply 
was the entire nation stirred up by this action 
that even the southern leaders telegraphed their 
willingness to give up their opposition to the 
north, if the government would cancel this agree- 
ment, but it went through just the same. 

The North now began to feel the need of a 
Parliament. Feng Kwoh Chang was not making 
a satisfactory President. Fighting between the 
two sections of the country was not getting any- 
where and the people were clamoring for peace. 
The original Parliament was considered illegal 
by the North, so the country was called upon to 
elect a new one. All provinces save those in the 
South responded, and the new Parliament con- 
vened August 12, 1918. The first work given 
them was to elect a new President. One who 
could be persona grata to all the country was 
sought for. The best they could do was to elect 

[122] 



THE REPUBLIC'S POLITICAL DEEDS 

Hsu Shih-chang, a man who had held office under 
the Manchus and had been Secretary of State 
under Yuan Shi-kai. 

The North probably had not a better man to 
put forward. The South had nothing against 
Hsu personally, but did not consider his election 
legal as they still counted the original Parlia- 
ment the rightful one. President Hsu was 
avowedly for peace and began at once to make 
plans for bringing it about. He appointed peace 
delegates and asked the South to do the same. 
At first they demurred, but public pressure com- 
pelled them to accede. There was long conten- 
tion over the place of meeting as the South pre- 
ferred Shanghai where they would have some 
foreign protection. The North contended for 
Nanking, but finally yielded. The Peace Con- 
ference in Shanghai worked well for a while. 
Peace in Europe was imminent and delegates 
were gathering in Paris at the world Peace Con- 
ference and China wanted to be represented. A 
divided China would have little power. Delegates 
finally were sent both from the North and the 
South and the Peking Government recognized 
both parties in order to enhance China's posi- 
tion. This, however, did not lead the Shanghai 
representatives to arrive at a peace basis and 
they finally broke up and went home. 

The failure of this conference revealed that 
the leaders on both sides were seeking selfish 
ends and that militarism was dominating the 
land. The people no longer had voice in the gov- 

[123] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

ernment. When they had been called upon to ex- 
press themselves by vote, they had voted as 
directed for men appointed by the party in 
power. In the spring of 1919, Sun Yat-sen, who 
had again allied himself with the Southern party, 
and had worked hard for peace and justice for 
the land, withdrew from his party and resigned 
all his offices. In a public letter he charged the 
Southern leaders with being as selfish and un- 
patriotic as the leaders in the North. He would 
henceforth have nothing more to do with either 
side. 

Such was the condition in the autumn of 
1919. The right-minded people of the country 
are completely discouraged and see no way out 
of the selfish conflict. A new Consortium of 
foreign bankers is talking of handling future 
loans to China. If they can protect themselves by 
compelling the disbandment of the soldiers and 
use them only when necessary, and demand that 
power be restored to civil officers, then all the 
country will rejoice. 



[124] 



VIII 

THE DOCTOR'S JOB 

By keeping in mind the previous chapter on 
the political changes which have been taking 
place in the new Republic and also remembering 
the passive resistance and sometimes violent 
opposition which took place in the days of the 
Monarchy, one can understand why mission 
work at times has been so discouraging and at 
others shown such rapid progress. The medical 
work has probably been the most steady of all. 
It matters not what the political conditions are, 
people will continue to abuse their bodies and 
become sick. 

One is often misled when studying such a 
vast country as China. We see photographs of 
the deeply rutted roads in the North and at once 
jump to the conclusion that all China has this 
loess soil formation. We see a picture of some 
queer head dress and think all Chinese women 
wear such gear. The Chinese have a saying, 
''Ten miles away from home the customs of the 
land all change." One has but to take a horse- 
back ride from the Yangtse River north to the 
borders of Shantung and try to collect samples 
of the styles of fashioning biscuits from wheat 
flour and he will have another sample in hand 

[125] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

of the varieties of customs in all matters which 
so distinguish the varying communities. Go on 
another such journey and study the head-dress of 
the women. Their methods of building the walls 
of their dirt houses, of running their markets, of 
celebrating at their weddings and funerals, are 
often quite different. They have styles in carry- 
ing poles, in straw sandals, in sun hats. The 
roads of the north are wide; those of the south 
but cow paths. 

There are some things in which China seems 
to be uniform. One of these has been the 
universal ignorance of sanitary laws. Much 
light has filtered in during the last twenty years. 
Yet, on the whole, China is still very dirty. One 
needs but to walk along the streets of any market, 
town or city to see piles of ancient refuse which 
are still growing in size. The nose is every- 
where assailed by a never ending variety of 
smells, some pleasing but most of them vile. 

One might be deceived into thinking that 
China has long known much about the laws of 
sanitation and hygiene. In winter the Chinese 
gradually increase the amount of clothing they 
wear, if they have it. As the variable days of 
spring come on, they take off as many layers as 
the weather allows. On a warm spring day they 
will have on as little as on an equally warm 
summer day. As the coolness of the evening re- 
turns the clothing again increases. Their rule 
is to boil all water used as a drink. Their food 
comes to the table steaming hot. They sweep 

[126] 



THE DOCTOR'S JOB 

the ground bare around their door. Their streets 
have drains. Anything combustible which they 
cannot eat, wear or otherwise use, is turned into 
fuel. They seem to waste little. Melon seeds, 
weeds, shrimps, snails, minnows, the lungs, 
kidneys, spleen and intestines of slaughtered 
animals, all become articles of food. Rags are 
used to make shoes or mops. A garment is 
patched until it will not longer hold together. 
Feathers are turned into dusters and toys. What 
the rich cast off becomes clothing for their 
servants. What the poor folks cannot eat be- 
comes food for the beggars — if it does not kill 
them. Nothing seems to be wasted. When it 
cannot otherwise be used it goes back to the 
soil, enriching it that more food may be pro- 
duced. All this sounds like good sanitation. 

The trouble seems to be that they are liable 
to work the process too far or too slowly. The 
garbage pile stands too long; is pulled over by 
beggars, is allowed to breed flies. After a while it 
may go to the fields. The city dumps grow like 
mushrooms in the night. Any unused back lot, 
unfrequented alley, handy street corner, especi- 
ally the banks of a nearby stream, are favorite 
dumping places. Men go about the city gathering 
up this refuse and stack it near the city gate or 
river side waiting the convenience of the farmer. 
In the streams the people wash their vegetables, 
rice, clothing, and bathe. From thence they get 
their water for cooking and drinking. The city 
drains feed into these streams. The sewers are 

[127] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

not laid in concrete or cemented, but usually 
roughly covered with flat stones so that the 
drain slowly becomes clogged with a black sedi- 
ment, good for fertilizing purposes but danger- 
ous to health. Perhaps once a year each ad- 
joining shopkeeper or house owner calls men 
and cleans his portion of the drain. 

The interior of most Chinese houses re- 
sembles some of our American barns. Around 
the sides are piled boxes, baskets, utensils, and 
lumber. Dirt accumulates everywhere. The 
center of the room is swept and chairs and 
furniture are dusted with cloth or feather 
dusters, so the dust settles elsewhere. Ceilings 
are festooned with spider webs and soot, and 
rafters are black with smoke from charcoal 
braziers. Rats and mice find beautiful hiding 
places and run at will about the place having 
ample protection for the rearing of large 
families. One often wonders how the weavers 
of silk garments manage to keep them from dirt 
and mould and moth. It is only done by placing 
them in boxes and stacking them high above 
the floor, or by turning them over to some of the 
great pawnshops which make it their chief busi- 
ness to care for such garments. However, these 
stormy years have driven numerous pawnshops 
out of business. They have found the soldiers 
too willing to levy on them for subscriptions 
which take all their profits. 

The butcher brings his pigs or goats alive 
to the market and there, on the much used and 

[128] 




D 

•ofl 

'5 

u 
O 



"■013 



THE DOCTOR'S JOB 

much abused street, slaughters them. If he is 
catering to the poor, he may butcher his animal 
elsewhere and not be particular as to its age, 
state of health, or cause of its untimely death. 
It may have been a donkey, dog or beast which 
has outgrown its usefulness. When people live 
near the starving line they are not particular as 
to what they are eating. We would eat such 
meat ourselves, I dare say, if we were as often on 
the verge of starvation as some Chinese have 
been. 

So we have to go slowly when considering 
China's theories and actual practices in regard 
to the laws of health. Although the water they 
drink is supposed to have been boiled, one needs 
to visit the hot water shop to see if this is true. 
Guests come to the homes at all hours of the 
day. It is the courteous thing to prepare him 
a cup of tea. A small coin is given to the 
servant and he rushes to the hot water shop and 
brings back a teapot full of water. It rarely has 
reached the actual boiling point. The gardener 
adds water to his fertilizing material which he 
has collected from the homes and streets. He 
pours this over the growing vegetables and later 
sells the vegetables. Such practices are fine 
methods for spreading intestinal diseases. All 
vegetables are supposed to be cooked, yet some 
come to the table merely withered. The Chinese 
urchin or his elder will pull up a turnip or radish 
or cucumber and munch away at it while he 
walks along. 

[129] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

Watermelons, pears, peaches and grapes are 
displayed on the street, are sampled by the hands 
of would-be purchasers and are covered with the 
fine dust raised by the feet of the many passers- 
by. The watermelon is cut into slices and the 
slices exposed for sale, so many cents per slice. 
No attempt is made to exclude dust or flies. 

The daily prepared steamed biscuit is 
usually perfectly safe and wholesome. People 
prefer to eat them hot. Those not on the table 
for immediate eating are kept in the covered 
steamer. On the other hand, certain bread 
makers produce large flat round cakes which 
are exposed on the street for sale and usually 
eaten cold. Upon these the flies are accustomed 
to congregate. 

The shop men gather each morning in the 
teashops, drinking tea and eating biscuit or 
vegetables and steamed meat pies. Here the 
waiter is the chief source of trouble. His apron 
has not been washed for weeks. The dish cloth 
hanging to his belt is an unworthy partner to his 
unworthy apron. With the dish cloth he brushes 
off the table, cleans the chopsticks and wipes the 
dishes. He uses it to flip flies off the foods and 
to drive out a hungry dog. We may turn in dis- 
gust from such a picture. Yet it is well to re- 
member that there are places in America no 
cleaner than this. 

Under such age-old conditions one wonders 
how the Chinese have managed to live and 
multiply in such numbers. The fact that they 

[130] 



THE DOCTOR'S JOB 

are an agricultural people and live simply, has 
much to do with it. They at least make the 
attempt to boil the water they drink. Their 
food is usually eaten hot. These things all aid 
in killing the deadly microbe. But the fact is, 
the Chinese do not really live under such conditions; 
they die. We are not exaggerating when we re- 
cord that there are more graves in China than 
living people. Graves of poor people rapidly 
disappear. A grave is made by heaping a mound 
of earth over a coffin in a very shallow hole. The 
mound may be as small as a child's sandpile or 
twenty and thirty feet in diameter, varying 
according to wealth. Walk around any town in 
China and estimate the number of graves which 
are scattered broadcast in fields and on knolls, 
under trees and in the open, in family grounds 
and in pauper groups. Around our city these 
cover far more ground than is within the city 
walls. Few of these graves are old. They re- 
present very recent generations. 

In America the length of the average life 
is nearly fifty years. It cannot be more than 
twenty years in China. There are still thousands 
of girl babies annually destroyed by poverty- 
stricken parents. The number who die before 
reaching twelve months is unbelievable. Women 
who give birth to eight or ten children do well 
if they rear two of these to adult life. Cattle and 
goats and water buffalo abound in the land, yet 
few sections of the people learned to use milk 
until very recently. Even now they prefer buy- 

[131] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

ing imported tinned milk. It simply is not an 
article of food to them. A few dairies are 
springing up near large cities in which for- 
eigners live, and the educated Chinese are be- 
ginning to buy their products for their children 
and sick people. They even do not know how 
to prepare such milk to fit the age and digestion 
of a babe. When mothers' milk has failed, they 
turn to rice gruel. They have no other substi- 
tute. 

The Chinese know nothing of quarantine. 
They believe that disease is inflicted by evil 
spirits. Every summer dysentery runs rife in 
the land and cholera is a frequent and terrible 
visitor. Typhoid, typhus, relapsing fever, small- 
pox and similar contagious diseases carry off 
their victims by the multitude. Children still 
scaling from smallpox are carried about the 
street in the arms of their parents. Crowds visit 
the sick chamber and each person has a favorite 
prescription to recommend. We were called by 
a woman to see her husband. We found him in 
a grass hut by the side of the street. His bed was 
a pile of grass laid on the ground. We peeped 
into the hut and found his body covered from 
head to foot with smallpox pustules. Scores of 
people were passing his hut every hour. 

We remember reading in our childhood days 
about Ivanhoe, the Crusaders, the great horses 
and men covered with armor weighing a couple 
of hundred pounds. We read of the beautiful 
and queenly women. We heard of the Indians 

[132] . . 



THE DOCTOR'S JOB 

who lived near to nature; of their women bear- 
ing children with the minimum of pain and of 
subsequent ills. We thought of barbarian and 
savage as the type of physical strength. The 
thought of sickness invading their habitations 
and turning them into weaklings did not occur 
to us. 

The truth of the matter is, the non-Chris- 
tian nations of the world are physically sick. 
Japan with her modern ideas may be somewhat 
of an exception. Go into homes in China and 
find the sick members of the family. They may 
be afflicted with tuberculosis or malaria, with 
sore eyes or opacity of the cornea, with ulcers or 
abscesses, with itch or eczema; but sick they 
are. 

One man who has traveled all over the 
world, made the statement before an American 
audience that there is more actual suffering in 
China today than there was upon the plains of 
Belgium during the German invasion, or upon 
all of the battlefields of Europe, Numbers of the 
Chinese still have their feet bound by conserva- 
tive grandmothers. There are no dentists to 
ease the pain of aching and decayed teeth. Huge 
abscesses and ulcers take their course. Mothers 
with weakened constitutions suffer acutely in 
their hour of trial. Ignorant midwives only add 
to the suffering, and uncounted multitudes of 
women die in childbirth. Millions of men, women, 
and children annually live on starvation diet — 
and die — from unnecessary fioods and sub- 

[133] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

sequent famines. We believe it true that the 
four hundred millions in China have more 
suffering than the forty millions under arms in 
Europe during the war. 

The Boxers in 1900 killed between one and 
two hundred foreigners and some tens of thous- 
ands of Christians. We held up our hands in 
horror at the act. But think of what is happen- 
ing annually in China in the toll of sickness and 
death. Look over the list of public men then 
prominent in this land. Yu Hsien, the butcher 
of so many missionaries and their children is 
long dead. The Emperor and Empress Dowager 
are gone. Yung Lu, the then Premier has passed 
on. Li Hung-chang who acted as mediator died 
soon after. Liu Kung-yu and Chang Chih-tung 
who, as viceroys in the Yangtse Valley, kept 
Central China quiet, are dead. Yuan Shi-kai, 
the first President of the Republic is dead. Hwang 
Hsing, one of the leaders in Revolution and Re- 
bellion died of pneumonia. Tsai Ao, the young 
and gifted leader in Yunnan, died of tuberculosis. 

When we try to recall the people in our city 
of 15,000 who were living fifteen years ago, we 
stand appalled at the number who are gone. 
Almost any morning we hear the pipers as they 
escort another body to the grave. But they do 
not pipe for the little children who die. One 
spring, not long ago, eight hundred refugees 
died on our streets and were buried by the city. 
Neither did any one pipe when they were wrap- 
ped up in matting and carried out to be dumped 

[134] 



THE DOCTOR'S JOB 

into a pauper's grave. So we say again, the 
Chinese do not live in the unsanitary conditions 
with which they are engulfed. They die. Were 
not the women so fruitful in bearing children 
the race would have disappeared long ago. 

In these days when Christian doctors, both 
Chinese and foreign, have added to their task 
that of educating the nation in hygiene and 
sanitation, there still are some foreigners who 
look upon such work as unwise. "If the people 
are not allowed to die off in this way, in thirty 
years they will double the population," these 
pessimists cry. *'How can China ever feed more 
than she already has?" Our reply to them and 
to the Chinese is that it is better to bear fewer 
children and rear them, than to bear so many 
and bury both them and their mothers in un- 
timely graves. It is appalling to think that in 
China two hundred millions of people — and more 
— have died since the missionaries came to this 
land. No wonder they are a poverty-stricken 
people. 

Now China, as we have seen, is not without 
her own physicians. Many of her men and 
women claim a knowledge of curative drugs. As 
far as we know there are no such institutions 
as medical schools in the old order. Each doctor 
has had passed down to him the knowledge he 
possesses. Perhaps he has bought a few of the 
old medical books and added to his stock of 
knowledge. Or there are those who from the 
books alone, have started out to treat the sick. 

[135] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

Such will gather in a few herbs, buy a pair of 
tortoise rimmed spectacles, put up a sign and 
try to heal the sick of the community. Most of 
the educated men have read enough of such 
books to decide whether they want to use the 
doctor's prescription or cast it into the waste 
basket. A man, poor both in medical knowledge 
and dollars, will gather together a few dried 
herbs, bee combs, snake skins, bits of animal 
bones and other articles, spread these upon a 
piece of cloth by the wayside and begin to treat 
the ills of any passerby who will pay him a few 
cents. 

Others who are richer by inheritance or by 
having patients most fortuitously get well in 
their hands, may open a pretentious drugstore, 
go forth in a sedan chair to see patients, or 
receive patients in an office attached to the store. 
If they can make room for a bed or two they 
boast of having a hospital. 

Not all of their drugs are worthless. Some 
of them are dangerous, the best of them 
medicinal herbs. On the hillsides near our city 
are a hundred varieties of plants used for medi- 
cine. In the spring the poor go forth to gather 
these, selling them to wholesale houses in the 
city. These herbs are dried and shipped to all 
parts of China, and some to other countries. A 
number of these are found in the lists which 
make up our western pharmacopoeia. Our drugs, 
however, are carefully gathered, prepared, ana- 
lyzed and tested before using. We know just 

[136] 



THE DOCTOR'S JOB 

the strength of the medicine we are prescribing. 
Adulteration of drugs is common with Chinese. 

Granting that in their list they have valu- 
able herbs, when they mix medicine and super- 
stition together, they gather no data as to which 
cures. Likewise they compound a dozen herbs 
to make one prescription. These they place in 
a vessel to brew. When the decoction is drawn 
off and given in huge doses to the patient, the 
dregs are taken out and dumped into the middle 
of the street that the evil spirit causing the dis- 
ease may follow the herbs and enter the body 
of some one passing by the pile. 

Not only are snake skins and tiger bones 
useful, in their minds, for medicines, but there 
are times when they prescribe lizards, grass- 
hoppers, human flesh and coffin nails. These 
are boiled with the herbs or alone. Hot or 
cold needles are repeatedly used. In a recent 
cholera epidemic nearly every patient brought 
to us had been tortured with needles. Adhesive 
plasters are stuck over festering sores or abscess 
sinuses. They are stuck on the temples for 
headache. It is supposed that decayed teeth are 
caused by worms getting into the cavity, and 
women go about the country claiming to be able 
to dig out v/orms with a chop-stick. When they 
find a victim who believes them, they dig away 
until they actually show him a white grub. The 
victim pays the fee asked and goes away happy 
— for a while. 

The Chinese doctors feel the pulse in both 

[137] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

wrists, and by them tells the patient whether he 
has a "cold" or "hot" disease. A "cold" drug 
naturally cures a "hot" disease. The patient 
always asks what he must avoid in eating. Even 
beggers will ask us this question. We usually 
tell them to eat all they can get. Lucky and un- 
lucky years are often blamed for disease — not 
the year in which the patient is taken sick but 
the year in which he was born. This also plays 
a more important part in marriage life. The 
old calendar was divided into series of twelve 
years each, a definite animal or bird controlling 
each one of the twelve. If a woman should be 
born in the year controlled by the tiger and her 
husband in another controlled by a dog — well, 
a marriage between such parties would not 
likely be consummated. The man would fear 
that his wife would dominate the home. 

These paragraphs give some faint idea of 
the job which doctors in China face. To lead 
people out of belief in such curative agencies 
and methods as we have outlined and give them 
a healthy faith in the laws of sanitation and 
hygiene is the mountainous task. Were it not 
for the hunger for western knowledge which the 
Chinese are showing, the eagerness with which 
they receive lectures and talks on these subjects, 
we would fear the task beyond our powers. We 
have lived in their midst for a score of years. 
We have, in previous chapters, described some- 
thing of the changes which have taken place in 
that space of time. Many Chinese in the city 

[138] 



THE DOCTOR'S JOB 

in which we live have become our friends. They 
have come into our homes; they know of the 
standard of health our children have main- 
tained. They have seen our children grow from 
babes to manhood. The small amount of sick- 
ness which we have had has been a source of 
wonder to them. Over and over again mission- 
ary mothers are asked how many children they 
have lost. In the face of their own terrible 
losses they cannot understand how our children 
escape. Gradually they are absorbing some of 
the simpler hygiene lessons. Where homes 
have lost several boy babies in succession, upon 
the birth of a new baby boy, the father will 
come to the Christian doctor and inquire in de- 
tail as to our methods of feeding and caring for 
our children. Slowly it is dawning upon them 
that our ideas on cleanliness, fresh air, bathing, 
regular feeding, proper clothing and regular 
habits of sleep are not so ridiculous as they at 
first sounded. They begin to see the danger lurk- 
ing in dust, flies and mosquitoes. They get a few 
simple lessons in anatomy and appreciate the 
value of proper posture and of exercise. They 
have been and still are a sick people, but "the 
leaves of the tree were for the healing of na- 
tions." The task is great but the day is not far 
distant when we shall see China as clean a na- 
tion, and as healthy, as is America. The King- 
dom of God will then be in China. 



[139] 



IX 

LIFTING UP MEN WHO HAVE FAILED 

We might have called these men beggars, 
refugees, physical wrecks, or one of a dozen 
other names. Most of them had no other way of 
keeping life in their bodies but to beg, and many 
of them have fallen by the wayside because of 
the unfathomable selfishness of men who have 
climbed to wealth over the bodies of their fellow- 
men. 

One morning when we opened the doors to 
admit the patients to the clinic, we found at the 
gate two wretched specimens of humanity. They 
had taken eight days to come a distance of 
twenty-five miles. Both were in rags. The man 
had a huge running sore on his leg. How he 
had been able to hobble those long miles is a 
mystery. His wife had only one eye and her 
hearing was gone and so was her power of in- 
telligent speech, but her body was in fair shape. 
The disease had worked its ravages upon her 
head and face. 

They had no money. They begged from 
village to village. When asked what had been 
the motive to drive them such a long distance, 
the man answered that he had heard we could 
cure disease and that we were kind to poor 

[140] 



LIFTING UP MEN WHO HAVE FAILED 

people. What could we do in the face of such 
faith? We took them in at the expense of the 
hospital, fed and clothed their bodies. 

In her younger days the woman had been 
sufficiently attractive to be desired by a rich 
man for an extra wife. Prom him she con- 
tracted the disease which took away all of her 
beauty and his desire for her. He cast her off 
and she returned to the home of her childhood. 
Then came this man whose trade was to sharpen 
tools for the country people. He was poor but 
wanted a wife. He was ignorant and knew 
nothing about the dangers from such a disease. 
The woman was willing to follow him and so 
they went on their way together. In a short 
time he was transformed from a useful member 
of society to a useless parasite. 

We kept them in the hospital for six months 
or more. We could not restore to the woman 
her eyesight nor her hearing. She was able to 
work and did all she could for her husband. We 
were able to heal and bring back strength to the 
man. While the process was going on we tried 
him out as we do most unfortunates. Little jobs 
about the place which we gave him to do, he did 
with all the strength he possessed. We succeeded 
in healing his leg and putting a reasonable 
am^ount of health into his body. He went out 
with his wife once m_ore, to face the world, this 
time not to beg but work at his simple trade. 

One day we called him in to do some rough 
work about the place. When he had finished 

[141] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

the job we paid him. We can still see him stand- 
ing at the door, the coins in his hands, unwilling 
to put the money into his pocket. 

*' What's the matter?" we asked. *ls it not 
enough?" 

''Enough?" he answered slowly. ''Enough? 
Why, teacher, it is not a case of its being enough. 
I do not feel that I have a right to take it." 

"Oh, that is all right," we responded. "You 
have earned it. You did your work well. Of 
course you should take it." 

"But teacher," he said earnestly, "How can 
I take money from you when you have done so 
much for me? I came to you an ignorant beg- 
gar. You gave me two legs so that I can again 
work like other men. More than that, you gave 
me a knowledge of Jesus Christ and led me to 
be His disciple. All that I am and have I owe 
to you. Now you feel compelled to pay me when 
I do a little work for you and would like to show 
you how much of gratitude I have in my heart." 

Is not work done for such people worth 
while? When one passes along the street and 
sees these so-called professional beggars in their 
rags, it makes one heartsick and he wonders 
whether it is worth while to trouble about them. 
We marvel that one can be content to exist in 
rags and filth. When we discover that China 
has very few such institutions as orphan asy- 
lums, homes for the aged, places for the blind 
and defective, and shelter for the widows, we 
are compelled to come to the conclusion that 

[142] 



LIFTING UP MEN WHO HAVE FAILED 

many of these do not beg out of sheer laziness 
but because there is no alternative. It is beg or 
starve. 

One day we saw a poor girl making her way 
along the street on her hands and knees. It was 
approaching winter and she was thinly clad. 
Upon her feet we saw ulcers which were pre- 
venting her from walking. In pity we took her 
into the hospital only to find she was a leper. 
Her ankles had become weakened and would 
not bear her weight. The ulcers were not pain- 
ful. We put splints upon her ankles, found an 
old pair of shoes which one of the children had 
outgrown and fastened them firmly upon her 
feet, padding the sores. Our carpenter made a 
pair of crutches. In a little time she had re- 
gained the use of her legs and was hobbling 
about on the crutches. 

The leprosy had twisted and gnarled her 
fingers. Her husband had abandoned her and 
5he was a long way from the home of relatives. 
In spite of the fact that we had no regular isola- 
tion ward, we arranged to keep her during the 
cold winter. In the warm days of the spring 
she went out to her life of begging again. We 
had no funds for establishing a leper ward as 
there are comparatively few of these unfortunate 
people in this section. When she went out she 
was warmly clothed and could walk on her 
crutches. In the days following we did not for- 
get her but did what we could to make life more 
tolerable. 

[143] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

We know that it is impossible for Christian 
missionary societies to care for all of China's 
unfortunates. If we could it would be unwise to 
shoulder the responsibility. Chinese must learn 
to do it for themselves. We can only do a model 
work along these lines. By so doing we stimu- 
late the Chinese to found asylums for their own. 
The real remedy is not to lead China merely to 
establish asylums for all of her unfortunates, 
but methods must be adopted whereby these un- 
fortunate people may be given opportunity to 
work. This is one of the tasks which the medi- 
cal missionary is undertaking. 

To the north of Chuchow is a great flat 
country, through which flows the Hwai River. 
Formerly this river flowed clear through to the 
Paciflc Ocean. Through neglect of the gov- 
ernment its bed slowly fllled up at the lower end. 
At ordinary times it now discharges its waters 
into the Grand Canal, which in turn pours it into 
the Yangtse River. When the great spring and 
summer rains come this river easily overflows 
its own banks and those of the Grand Canal, 
flooding the surrounding rice country. In heavy 
floods homes are destroyed and the crops in large 
sections of the country are inundated. The 
people are driven to the high dykes. Their 
crops being destroyed, they have no resource 
but to start on the road and beg for a living. In 
some sections in the north the people work for 
the landlord for a set wage. When flood or 
drouth destroys the crops, he merely discharges 

[144] 



LIFTING UP MEN WHO HAVE FAILED 

whole villages of them, practically turning them 
out to die. 

These unfortunate farmers pack a few 
necessary things on a wheelbarrow and begin 
their journey to nowhere. They have a little 
food for the beginning of their journey. Per- 
haps a crippled old grandmother forms part of 
the wheelbarrow's load. The children may ''get 
a lift" at times, but they are usually toddling on 
behind. As they go through the country they 
will pull a few turnips from one field or filch 
some beans from another. At night they fasten 
up some matting for a tent, and cover the ground 
with wild grass, cut from the roadside. That is 
their bed and their house for many a weary and 
cold day. When members of the family fall sick 
there is no resource but to leave the sick one be- 
hind. The party slowly disintegrates and few, 
if any, ever get back to their old home. 

Sometimes the government grants a sum 
of money and instructs some official to open 
soup kitchens. For miles around the news 
travels and the poor people hurry to the spot. 
The scene around the soup kitchens becomes a 
riot. Starving people, with no one to keep order, 
strive with each other for a bowl of thin gruel. 
It is given out only once a day. Soldiers are 
usually placed on guard to keep order, but are 
helpless before the mob. A vast throng of starv- 
ing, ragged men, women and children fight and 
struggle to get into the temple where the soup 
is being given out. Gates are often torn out, 

[145] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

even walls pushed down. Weak ones fall and 
are trampled under foot by the others. 

A few years ago our own city had such an 
experience. For the first time within our knowl- 
edge the local rice crop was a failure for two 
years in succession. Since we were fortunate 
enough to be on the line of the new railroad the 
city authorities were able to import rice and sell 
it at low enough price to keep off famine until 
spring. Then the government granted a sum of 
money and the city elders proposed to open soup 
kitchens. They asked for the co-operation of 
our missionaries in the work. We advised the 
giving of tickets to only local poor and the ar- 
ranging of some form of relief work for all able 
to labor. The elders had had no experience in 
soup kitchen work and did not want to bother 
with relief work. They saw no method by which 
local poor could be separated from others who 
might flood in, so proposed giving to all alike. 
Although it was not according to our judgment, 
we threw ourselves into the work. 

With the exception of some rickety gates 
in the front of the temple in which they pre- 
pared the rice, there was no provision for con- 
trolling the crowds. The poor people rushed in 
from all the surrounding country. They broke 
down the wooden gates and overflowed the 
kitchen. Even the official with all of his police 
could not keep order. Then we suggested the 
building of a barricade in front, leaving a nar- 
row passageway through which the poor could 

[146] 



LIFTING UP MEN WHO HAVE FAILED 

come one at a time. They turned the gate over 
to us, and we succeeded in controlling the thous- 
ands who pushed forward. But the willingness 
of the elders to feed all who might come reached 
its limits the fourth day when a number equal 
to half the city's population pressed through the 
gates. We could control the gates but even then 
the giving out of the food could not be controlled 
and the kitchen had to be closed down. During 
those days on guard at the gate, we were several 
times obliged to force our way through the 
crowd and pull some feeble person to his feet to 
save him from being trampled to death. 

This all occurred since the days of founding 
the Republic, in days when people are much 
more enlightened than formerly. They wanted 
to help the refugees and the poor, but found it 
beyond their capabilities. They found they could 
not do what they had planned. But government 
money was in their hands and they must use it. 
So they came a second time to us for help in 
solving the problem. Again we suggested local 
relief work and the limiting of tickets to local 
poor. 

"What kind of relief work can be done?" 
they asked. 

We mentioned the macadamizing of a street, 
the constructing of a small bridge and the level- 
ing of a suitable market place. 

"If you will register those you think we 
ought to feed, plan out and oversee the relief 
work you think can be done, we will furnish the 

[147] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

funds and attend to the feeding of the people," 
was their challenge. 

We accepted it and at once the hospital was 
turned into a registry depot. No one was reg- 
istered who did not bring a note of introduction 
from some responsible man in the city. Men, 
women and children came and were organized 
into groups of ten each. Outside refugees and 
beggars quickly disappeared when they found 
we were not attempting the impossible. Many 
of them did not care to work. They quickly 
dropped out of the ranks and troubled the soup 
kitchens no miore. Any who were sick or dis- 
abled were registered in the same manner, 
divided into groups with a group leader and al- 
lowed entrance to the feeding station at the 
same time with the workers. A few responsible 
young men were found to oversee those who 
worked. 

Only those who have attempted such work 
can appreciate the difficulties we encountered. 
The poor had never before been thus compelled 
to work for their living when that living was 
from public funds. Some shirked and others re- 
belled. Tickets were taken away from the worst 
and that meant they were denied admittance to 
the kitchens. Even some of the group leaders 
had to be discharged and better ones advanced 
from the ranks. Those capable of doing mason 
work were selected for the building of the small 
bridge. Large, ancient, city wall brick furnished 
the material for the structure. Some fine char- 

[148] 



LIFTING UP MEN WHO HAVE FAILED 

acters were discovered during the three months 
the work went on. These men were promoted 
and later were aided in securing permanent jobs. 
One of these today is head of the coolies working 
the agricultural grounds of the University of 
Nanking. 

On Sundays we held services for these 
workers. The steps of the Confucian Temple 
furnished the auditorium. Later our night 
school was started and a number learned to read. 
Some were won to Christ in the process. The 
visible result of the three months' work is a new 
street which runs from the heart of the city to 
the railroad station. Another street which had 
long been abandoned as an open sewer was 
cleaned up, leveled off and made fit for traffic. 
A number of ancient dumps disappeared. A 
market place was leveled. Best of all the city 
was stimulated to plan for and carry out other 
street improvements. 

It was the first attempt here to solve this 
problem of handling refugees who so often flock 
to this region. We remember in a previous year 
that, as a result of floods north of us, thousands 
flocked through this district. They were a pest 
to the farmers whose fall crops of turnips, beans 
and sweet potatoes suffered. The refugees dug 
up what they wanted as they moved through the 
country. In the city they begged from shop to 
shop. The merchants kept a supply of small 
cash near their counters. A refugee would stand 
before the shop and beg, hindering trade, until 

[149] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

he had received at least one of these small coins. 
Shopmen told me that it was an average day 
when each gave out from one to two hundred of 
these coins. Had they, under some capable 
leader, pooled this money and set up relief work 
at that time, they would have accomplished much 
for the city and avoided pauperizing the refu- 
gees. 

Dr. Macklin, in his hospital at Nanking, 
early set the pace for many of the mission hos- 
pitals in helping these needy refugees. Through 
long years, without money and without price, he 
gathered in from the streets and alleys the sick 
or disabled. Often these had lain down to die. 
Malaria, fever or bowel troubles had attacked 
their weakened bodies. Passersby paid no at- 
tention though the stricken person was dying, 
or did die. Dr. Macklin, when finding such a 
man, would call a ricksha, load in the patient 
and take him to the hospital. He kept many a 
poor patient who came with only sufficient money 
to pay for a few days' food. The doctor believed 
in completely healing such men before sending 
them back to battle with the world. He started 
gardens on the hospital grounds and put these 
men to work. When he could not raise enough 
money otherwise, he appealed to some high 
official or some rich patient to help. These be- 
lieved in his work and during the years gave 
thousands of dollars for the refugees. 

Some such patients, however, would be too 
far gone to be restored. They were given a 

[150] 



LIFTING UP MEN WHO HAVE FAILED 

decent place in which to die. Then the city was 
called upon to bury them. Some of them had 
suffered for years with huge ulcers. Some had 
troubles easily cured — when the doctor had an 
opportunity to minister to them. He not only 
opened gardens for them; some he had scrub 
the hospital floors; others carried water; 
cleaned the yard, or cared for his horses. Many 
a useful life has been thus brought back to 
health and saved for a life of usefulness, and not 
a few became Christians. 

At best such work can only be a model for 
inspiring the Chinese to care for their own 
fellowmen. The great solution can only be 
reached when steps are taken to eradicate 
poverty. The picking up of a few derelicts is 
hitting at the wrong end of the problem. Dr. 
Macklin always recognized this and preached 
and fought with his pen to arouse the people on 
this subject. Men who have thus been saved 
listen the more readily to the Gospel. Their ex- 
periences have shown them that they need 
greater strength than they have possessed. In 
the turning of such men to righteousness, the 
work has paid with big interest. 

One of Dr. Macklin's earliest cases and his 
first convert, was Shi Kwei-biao. This man for 
twenty years had been a strolling story teller. 
He was addicted to opium smoking. For more 
than thirty years he has now been a powerful 
preacher of the Gospel. He has in turn picked 
up many others who had fallen into like diflfi- 

[151] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

culties and not a few of these have also become 
Christian workers. We recall not less than two 
educated men who have come back to life and 
activity through similar work done in our Chu- 
chow hospital. Both have become Christians 
and rendered helpful service in hospital and 
schools. 

Wang Hwei-luen was another example of 
these sufferers. He had been a coolie worker in 
railroad construction. Pernicious malaria drove 
him from his job and when he tried to return 
to his home in the north he only succeeded in 
reaching our city and lay down in weakness not 
far from our hospital. Our refugee ward was 
overflowing and funds were scant but we took 
him in and nursed him back to health. He 
showed his appreciation by hunting out and doing 
small jobs about the place. He cut wood, he 
worked in the garden, he cared for our cattle. 
Finally he graduated into a fine gardener — and 
a Christian. He learned to read and is now our 
cook and a most faithful servant. 

When the Revolution came on, everybody 
was seeking a safe place. Some were closing 
out their business and hastening back to their 
old homes. Some were moving into the city and 
others hastening into the outlying country. We 
were going out to the hospital one morning 
when Hwei-luen stopped us at the gate. 

"Teacher, I have been thinking over the 
trouble," he said. "I know trouble is likely to 
come to this city. We are on the railroad over 

[152] 



LIFTING UP MEN WHO HAVE FAILED 

which soldiers will likely pass. I have been 
talking the matter over with God and I told God 
that if trouble does come here, and you need 
me, I want to help you. You tell me where you 
may want me to go and I will go. You show me 
what I can do to help you and I will do my best 
to aid you." 

How would you have felt if some servant or 
employee of yours had come to you with such a 
message? This man made good his offer. He 
became a messenger between this place and 
Nanking, losing his fine long queue on one of 
those trips. He went through dangers but never 
hesitated. He was £:lways on hand when we 
had a bit of unpleasant service which needed to 
be done. He stood by us when we were weary 
with the heavy responsibilities. His faithful- 
ness made it easier to do the task which suddenly 
became ours in aiding the city. He was one of 
the rope holders when we had to go down over 
the walls ; when we would return he was always 
there waiting for us. Such faithfulness as this 
makes our work worth while. 



[153] 



THE MISSIONARY DOCTOR AND 
CHINESE WOMAN 

Ignorant downtrodden women are the most 
religious people found in the Orient. They are 
the most fearful of impending calamities. They 
are the most superstitious believers in miracu- 
lous manifestations of spirits. They are the most 
devout worshippers of idols. They most easily 
believe in and are deceived by any passing rumor, 
especially if it is a rumor of approaching evil. 
From of old they have been despised of men. 
They have been subjected to the will of the male 
who calls himself their lord. The younger ones 
are evilly treated by the older ones of their own 
sex. Why should not such conditions cultivate 
in them a frame of mind which would lead them 
always to be fearful of new calamities? Their 
husbands have called them idiots, demoniacal in 
temper, unstable in habit. They have no other 
solace than their religion. Who else is there 
that will listen to their moaning hearts but the 
dumb idols who are always at home in the 
temples? 

Possibly we at times misjudge the sensitive- 
ness of the Oriental woman. Occidental women 

[154] 



THE MISSIONARY DOCTOR AND CHINESE WOMAN 

are liable to regard their sisters in the East as 
they would themselves were they called upon to 
leave their culture and refinement and move into 
the ignorance and coarseness and apparent com- 
fortlessness which surrounds the women of 
China. Chinese women have known no other lot 
They have never lived in a foreign house or 
foreign land. They have not the education and 
culture of the Occidental women. They do not 
know the depths of the conditions in which they 
live, for they have never viewed the heights. 
But they are not satisfied. They do not neces- 
sarily aspire to be a companion to their hus- 
bands, but they have never found pleasure in 
polygamy, in harlotry, or in being held under 
the will of man. 

*'The smallest thing in the world is no small- 
er than was the joy of my father when I was 
born," said one educated Chinese woman. **He 
didn't want me, had no use for me. I was but a 
burden on his hands. He must care for me, 
feed me, until he could find a suitable husband 
for me. I was expected to go out of his home and 
life when that husband was found." "Why did 
you save it!" cried one poor woman to the mis- 
sionary doctor when he placed in her arms the 
new born baby girl. "We poor people cannot af- 
ford to rear girls." "Is it a boy or girl?" im- 
mediately asks the midwife of the same doctor, 
"If it is a girl, do not trouble to make it breathe. 
They don't want it." 

In these latter days the missionary doctor 

[155] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

is called more frequently to attend the mother 
in her hour of trial. The moment he steals into 
the room he feels the eager, anxious spirit which 
possesses every one in the home. "Will it really 
be a boy this time, or just another girl?" every- 
one seems to be asking under the breath. 
If it happens to turn out to be a girl a cloud seems 
to settle over the home. This feeling is so 
strong that even the doctor finds himself almost 
praying that it may be a boy. The depression 
which reflexly comes over him upon the advent 
of a girl is so great that with difficulty can he 
bear the weariness resulting from his hard work 
over the mother. While in the Christian homes 
he may hear them say,"It is God's grace," yet he 
knows that they, too, are still influenced by this 
age-old atmosphere and they are wishing that the 
grace of God might have been a little more liber- 
al and had sent them a boy. If the doctor does 
announce the new arrival to be a boy, the air 
becomes fairly vibrant with joy. Everyone is 
smiling and congratulating the father, the 
grandparents and each other. The next morning 
when the father goes out on the street people 
greet him in a jovial way. When is he going to 
send around the colored eggs? When is he going 
to spread the feast? They are all ready to con- 
gratulate him and rejoice with him. No red eggs 
are ever sent out to announce the arrival of a 
girl baby. No feasts are spread. No one greets 
the father in an unusual way. The arrival of the 
girl is not even mentioned. Why should she be 

[156] 



THE MISSIONARY DOCTOR AND CHINESE WOMAN 

made a topic of conversation? She adds nothing 
to the home of her parents. Her only value is in 
the home of a future husband. What incentive is 
there for poor people to grow such useless 
timber? Missionaries in their afternoon walks 
about their city walls still see the little rolls of 
matting which were cast over the preceding 
night. Each roll contains a little body, the life 
of which was snuffed out before it was given 
its right to breathe. Of course these bundles 
come only from the homes of the poor or the dis- 
reputable. People of standing and education 
would injure their reputation if it were known 
they had done such a thing. 

No wonder, then, these downtrodden women 
hold to their religion and their idols with super- 
stitious tenacity. Their only companionship is 
found with other women. Their news is mere 
v/ild rumor, their pastime is indoor gossip or 
cardplaying, their happiness is found when they 
give birth to a son, their chief hope is that they 
may ward off calamity from their home. As- 
siduous worship is their chief help. 

The women used to shrink out of sight when 
the first foreigners appeared in their city and 
passed their doors. Their children ran in terror 
from the sight of them. Had they not been told 
that the glance of a foreigner could bring on 
sickness? Did not the doctor's skill come from 
his using the eyes and hearts of children to 
make medicines? They heard that he could 
with those blue eyes of his see three feet into the 

[157] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

ground and discover all manner of precious 
stones. These and many other stories were in 
the early days circulated by the influential Chi- 
nese who wanted nothing of the foreigner. The 
women were quite ready to believe such tales. 
They rehearsed them over the gambling tables. 
They frightened the children to silence by threat- 
ening to turn them over to the foreigner. So 
when foreigners first visited a place women and 
children kept far away. 

When, however, the missionary mother and 
her children came to town, the women could not 
restrain their curiosity. From their own experi- 
iences they could reason that she could not be as 
dangerous as her husband. A crowd usually fol- 
lowed the foreigner when he entered a place. A 
far greater crowd gathered when his wife came 
to town. Although the women would venture out 
to see her, they would shrink back when she 
tried to greet them. If her hand stretched out to 
pat some bonny babe, the Chinese mother pushed 
back into the crowd lest the touch of that hand 
would bring disease. 

The men from the beginning would crowd 
about when the foreigner's home was being 
built. They had never seen anything like this 
new structure. Their own homes were poorly 
built, one story in height. Here in their midst 
was going up a compact building, while theirs 
were spread out over large areas. The foreign 
building would rise to three stories, counting the 
attic. The floors were of real wood and raised 

[158] 



THE MISSIONARY DOCTOR AND CHINESE WOMAN 

high above the ground. The windows were all of 
glass instead of paper. There were white-wash- 
ed walls and plastered ceilings. Doors were fast- 
ened on curious hinges and peculiar locks. Bra- 
ziers were built into the walls instead of placing 
movable ones in the middle of the room. Such 
things as jBreplaces they had never seen. Nei- 
ther had they formerly seen such peculiar outer 
doors to the windows, doors with a "hundred 
leaves" (their name for shutters). 

If our houses have been a matter of curios- 
ity to them, how much more so has been the fur- 
niture and conveniences we install within them. 
For the sake of publicity, when we first occupied 
a new house, we would set a feast and invite the 
magistrate and chief men of the city. Even they, 
in the early days, were a trifle afraid of eating 
what might be set before them. To have asked 
them to eat with knives and forks would have 
been asking the impossible. They had never 
eaten a foreign meal, neither had they seen one 
eaten. So to set their minds entirely at rest, we 
would have some restaurant supply a regular 
Chinese feast with which they were all perfectly 
familiar. After the feast, or before, as the occa- 
sion might warrant, we would take the invited 
guests from kitchen to attic. Of course, we saw 
that the women and children of our homes were 
out for the day. It would have been as embar- 
rassing for the chief magistrate as it would have 
been to the foreigner's wife, to have expected 
her to preside at a Chinese feast. Neither could 

[159] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

we show these men guests over the house if she 
were in some room. 

These august guests would look at the pic- 
tures on the walls, the books in the case, the 
typewriter on its stand and the white sheets on 
the beds. Everything had to be explained and 
demonstrated. Possibly if we had been taken in 
like manner into their homes, we might have 
masked our curiosity, yet there we would have 
seen a hundred interesting things, we know, for 
often have we taken our globe-trotting friends 
into the home of some Chinese friend. This 
throwing open our homes to the leading men of 
the city at the very first always gave opportunity 
to explain and get out of the minds of the people 
the preposterous guesses they had made as to 
the utility of the furnishings we placed in the 
homes. These men went back to their homes and 
told their friends all that they had seen and 
heard in our house. These told it to others. The 
city thus came to know, to become interested and 
to call upon us. Others wished to see what the 
chief men of the dity had seen. 

Since their men folk had entered the foreign 
compound and escaped unharmed, the women be- 
gan to wonder why they could not venture to call 
upon the foreign woman. Often these first visi- 
tors did not come much farther than the gate 
and wall around our places. Then some of the 
bolder ones would venture in. Very likely they 
were accompanied by some male member of their 
family whom they had persuaded to come. They 

[160] 



THE MISSIONARY DOCTOR AND CHINESE WOMAN 

would hesitate when they were invited into the 
house, but when they saw a Chinese amah 
(nurse) standing by the side of the foreign lady 
they would venture in. 

The rugs on the floor troubled them. Sure- 
ly they ought not walk on these. The moving of 
a rocking chair gave fright to many. They po- 
litely accepted the tea served them but never 
drank of it. It might contain some secret nost- 
rum which would influence them to "eat the for- 
eign doctrine." The men rarely showed any 
surprise, but the women were full of exclama- 
tions and questions. The Chinese servant was 
kept busy answering. They had an idea that it 
would be impossible to understand a word the 
foreign lady might say. When they unexpectedly 
understood some simple statement they would 
exclaim, "Why she talks just like we do." Curio- 
sity and fear struggled in their breast. They were 
offered sweetmeats which had been bought on 
their own streets and made by their own people. 
They did not dare to eat a particle. These first 
visits led many others to come. They came and 
went and no calamity befell them, so the fear of 
the foreigner began to disappear. 

The foreign dispensary became the next 
point of interest to these women. First patients 
were always from the poor, the helpless, the 
hopeless cases. These were questioned. One 
would be cured of scabies or malaria or con- 
junctivitis. Chinese doctors would fail to cure 
some desperate cases and the foreigner was the 

[161] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

last resort. Respectable people did not think of 
bringing their common ills to him. They would 
rather suffer for days with the toothache than 
have the foreigner touch them. Sooner or later 
there always came some case with a malady with 
which the patient found life unbearable. If he 
could not be cured he might just as well die. 

In our case it was a boy with a huge sarcoma 
upon his entire hand which offered us opportuni- 
ty to demonstrate the value of western surgery. 
It was sapping the life of the boy. No Chinese 
doctor could cure it; neither could a foreigner, 
except by amputation. The boy and his friends 
were all willing for this. In prayer we made 
our preparations. A convenient Chinese door was 
taken off its posts and laid upon high benches 
for an operating table. The hands of the patient 
were carefully cleansed. The group of men ac- 
companying the boy sat on the side of the room 
to watch the case. They saw the patient go to 
sleep under the anesthetic. They saw the knife 
make the first cut and saw the first blood flow. 
Then they hurried outside. When the operation 
was finished and the stump bandaged they came 
back and saw the boy regain consciousness. 
Thanks be to Him who watches over these oper- 
ations, the wound healed by first intention 
and the boy went home in ten days. Years after- 
ward we heard he was well and strong. 

Patients began to increase after such suc- 
cesses. We were able to relieve many, to heal 
some, occasionally to save a life. The women 

[162] 



THE MISSIONARY DOCTOR AND CHINESE WOMAN 

would marvel so much at the tenderness, the 
sympathic touch of the doctor as at his cure. 
**He does not turn up his nose at the stench of us 
women as do our doctors," they would say. 

Better tales slowly would circulate among 
them. The better class women would, by this 
time, be on quite friendly terms with the mission- 
ary mother. To her a group would come and tell 
a tale of woe. One of their number would be suf- 
fering from an aching tooth or a boil or scabies 
or one of a hundred other small things. The 
doctor would step in from the dispensary and 
often treat the patient right in the home. If the 
day's clinic was over they might be persuaded to 
walk over to the dispensaiy, the foreign lady go- 
ing along. If it was an aching tooth, it would 
not be long before the group v/ould be returning 
home showing the offending member to every 
friend met along the street. **It stopped aching 
before he pulled it," they would tell the women. 

Thus it became an easy step from visiting 
the sympathetic missionary mother to visiting 
the doctor. They found sympathy and tenderness 
at both places. What the doctor could not do 
alone, his wife was able to do for him and with 
him. Together the home and the hospital began 
to storm this great citadel of heathenism, — the 
Chinese woman. These superstitious women 
with child minds can be reached only by the 
patient ministry of love. 

But the women are not an impossible propo- 
sition. Give them the advantages of a Christian 

[163] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

education and see the wonderful character they 
can develop. The stories of Drs. Mary Stone and 
Ida Kahn are known over several continents. 
They graduated at the medical department in 
Ann Arbor, Michigan, carrying off the honors of 
their class. Mary Stone was the child of poor 
parents. Ida Kahn was thrown out to die. A 
Christian missionary took them and educated 
them in her home. When she had given them 
all she could in China she took them to America 
and spent that first year with them in the medi- 
cal school. Then she left them to walk alone 
and they did not fail her. 

The girls went back to their native province. 
Dr. Stone has built in Kiukiang a great women's 
hospital. Dr. Kahn worked for years in the pro- 
vincial capital, Nanchangfu. The Chinese wom- 
en have flocked to them for aid. A thousand of 
them spend time in these hospitals every year. 
Thousands have heard the Gospel and believed. 
They have trained bands of Christian nurses who 
are called to the homes of Chinese and foreigners 
alike. There is no person in all that country 
more loved, more sought after than these Chinese 
women doctors. They minister to rich and poor. 
Men consult them for their wives, and for their 
own ills. They are wonderful examples of the 
power of Christianity to transform womanhood. 

In years past there has been an occasional 
man with no sons born to him who, in a sort 
of desperation or in advance of his generation, 
has educated his daughters. Such girls have 

[164] 



THE MISSIONARY DOCTOR AND CHINESE WOMAN 

usually shown themselves capable of taking on 
the highest culture, and making strong charac- 
ters. Mrs. Chow, the head of a government or- 
phanage in Nanking, is one such woman. When 
the Revolutionary soldiers followed up the re- 
treating enemy, they found themselves in a fam- 
ine stricken region. Parents offering to sell 
their children that they might buy food to save 
themselves found purchasers in the soldiers who 
would take them back to their own homes for 
servants or slaves. The Nanking authorities re- 
fused to allow them to do this and bought back 
the entire group of six hundred boys and girls. 
They hunted for a woman with education and 
executive ability who could manage the needed 
orphanage and Mrs. Chow was called. For eight 
years she managed the orphanage with skill far 
beyond the strength of her little body; indeed 
she made the orphanage. One needs visit the 
place and see the industrial work she has estab- 
lished, watch the children in their gymnastics, 
attend their half day school, to realize what a 
wonderful woman she is. 

During the Rebellion of 1913 the city gov- 
ernment was thrown into confusion and the Red 
Cross, organized by the foreigners, was asked 
to protect the place temporarily. Of the six hun- 
dred children then in the orphanage, two hun- 
dred were girls over fifteen years of age. It was 
an assured fact that the city would be taken, and 
when taken, looted. Women would be ravaged 
and there was a grave danger overshadowing the 

[165] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

orphanage. The missionaries accepted the re- 
sponsibility and the Red Cross flag rightly- 
floated over the place. No harm came to them, 
though on all sides evil men worked their will 
on defenseless people. This act of the mission- 
aries led Mrs. Chow to investigate the claims of 
Christianity and soon she herself accepted 
Christ. 

From the time single woman missionaries 
took up the task of girls' schools in China, they 
have been undermining the age-old attitude of 
the Chinese toward their women. Christian 
girls* schools have compelled the starting of gov- 
erment girls' schools. The Chinese have seen the 
missionary homes in which husband and wife 
are equally educated and trained. They have 
been furnished examples of the power of Chris- 
tian education to produce cultured women, even 
though the material used is from among their 
own girls. However, they found it easier to 
start girls' schools than to manage them success- 
fully. Having no educated women to teach such 
schools, they have had to turn them over to men 
teachers, and unseemly actions frequently have 
injured the reputations of the schools. Invari- 
ably mission girls' schools have been presided 
over by single or married women who can give 
careful supervision; thus scandals are avoided. 

Only a few women physicians have come to 
China, but all who have come have been warmly 
welcomed by the Chinese women. No matter 
how fully their old fear of the foreigner has been 

[166] 



THE MISSIONARY DOCTOR AND CHINESE WOMAN 

driven out of their minds and hearts, the long 
cultivated nature of the Oriental woman makes 
it exceedingly hard for her to think of bringing 
her ills to a foreign man doctor. 

Yet there is probably not one male mission- 
ary physician who has worked in this land but 
can tell many stories of how these women have 
overcome their natural dread and placed them- 
selves trustingly in his hands. We have had 
them come into our operating room and lie 
down on the table with apparently as much con- 
fidence in us a.s though we were their mothers 
and they were lying down on their bed of child- 
hood to be tucked in by loving hands. We have 
placed the anesthetizing cone over their faces 
and sent them ofc to sleep, performing the 
needed operation, marvelling all the while at 
the faith they were showing in us. 

In the earlier days, if the medical missionary 
was called to minister to a woman in her hour of 
trial, it was not usual that the call came until it 
had become a matter of life and death. Too often 
the woman was found with life too far gone to be 
called back. Today a constantly increasing num- 
ber of homes expect the doctor to take the case in 
hand. The doctor goes, not alone to save a life, 
but also to reveal the spirit of Christ. There have 
been times when we, exerting every muscle and 
nerve in our endeavor to save the patient, have 
received unexpected recognition from the old 
mothers standing by. Anything we ask they 
eagerly do. They see the perspiration pouring 

[167] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

from our face and they find a clean towel and 
wipe away the sweat. When the crisis is past 
and the life again is in safety, these same old 
mothers seize hold of our hands and express In 
every possible way their feelings of thanksgiving 
for what we have done. **He was spending him- 
self for us to save us," they say in their own way. 



[168] 



XI 
BUILDING A RAILROAD 

"It is expedient for you that one man should 
die for the people that the whole nation perish 
not." 

Thirty engineers had been gathered from 
England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, for the 
building of the southern end of the Tientsin — 
Pukow Railroad. A line a little over two hundred 
miles in length was to be surveyed, leveled, 
bridges built over streams, ballast found and con- 
veyed, stations erected and rolling stock built or 
assembled. After the preliminary survey the 
men were scattered along the line ten or fifteen 
miles apart. A telephone line had been put up 
that their chief might keep in touch with them 
and they with one another. Each man had to fix 
up quarters, some in temples, some in rented 
Chinese houses, some in junks anchored in con- 
venient streams and some had to build their 
own houses out of such material as could be 
readily found. By the judicious use of flooring, 
glass, putty and whitewash they could make 
themselves fairly comfortable. Their food sup- 
plies were purchased in Nanking or Shanghai 
and weekly sent upon the backs of animals. As 

[169] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

some of them expressed it, "We lived in tins." 
Such meals could readily become monotonous, 
especially as there was only the Chinese "boy" 
and no woman to plan them. Often they were 
tempted to try the Chinese vegetables. Some- 
times, in spite of the warning of their chief who 
was an old hand in China, they did try them. 
Perhaps nothing happened; perhaps the experi- 
menter came down with bowel trouble, or even 
typhoid fever. Day by day they were wading 
streams and ponds, facing rain or blistering sun. 
They would be coming in at night tired and per- 
haps chilled. Under such conditions it is not 
easy either to keep well or keep up courage. 

Their contracts called for a foreign doctor 
who should look after the health of the engi- 
neers. One doctor had been brought all the way 
from England but he quickly proved to be the 
wrong man for the job. A physician from one of 
the port cities was next induced to accept the 
task but it was too much for him and he soon 
resigned. Between times the missionary doctors, 
scattered in cities along the proposed line, were 
called in as substitutes for the promised doctor 
who so often had failed them. 

This condition had been going on for some 
months, and the men felt that the contract was 
not being kept. Most of them were not very well 
at intervals, and they did not know when they 
might be seized with some serious disease. The 
only method of traveling up and down the line 
was by horse and, with the exception of the mis- 

[170] 



BUILDING A RAILROAD 

sion doctors, there was no physician within call 
of their telephone. 

We were talking with one of the engineers 
one evening and he was criticising very strongly 
the dilatory way in which the medical question 
seemed to be treated by those in higher positions 
on the line. The words of Caiaphas came to our 
mind. 'It is expedient for you that one man 
should die for the people." Down through the 
ages history had seemed to indicate the truth of 
this saying. Some one must give his life to im- 
press a great truth upon the world before it 
would be heeded. Would some of these engineers 
be called upon to lay down their lives before 
those above them realized the blunder they were 
making in not furnishing proper medical atten- 
tion for their men? 

The wife of that very engineer came out in 
the autumn to join him and make his work more 
comfortable. How lonely the job out in those 
isolated villages and towns is, only one who has 
lived in such conditions can appreciate. The 
knov/ledge that a fellow engineer could be called 
upon a telephone helped to balance the fact that 
the Chinese language was a strange jargon. Al- 
though each one was furnished with an interpre- 
ter he was more often an ''interrupter." 
The customs of the Chinese were, of course, as 
strange and incomprehensible as was their 
speech. Happy was the engineer who had a wife 
to join him. When this engineer's wife came she 
quickly made a home out of the place he called 

[171] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

"quarters." She was bright and cheery and made 
his work a real pleasure. Coming home at night 
after a day's tramp out on the line was something 
worth looking forward to. But pneumonia sud- 
denly prostrated the man. The railroad at that 
time was not recognizing the missionaries as 
doctors for their men, but we happened to be at 
home at the time and there was no one else to 
call. We stepped in, won a fight against the dis- 
ease and saved his life. He was given a short 
leave of absence in which to convalesce and the 
couple went to Japan. He came back to his en- 
gineer's task but medical conditions were not 
changed. When the railroad did have a doctor, 
they stationed him at the lower end of the line, 
thirty miles from Chuchow and two hundred 
miles from some of the engineers, a long way 
indeed, when one has to travel on horseback. 

We had our regular mission work to which 
we must give regular attention. Although the 
railroad had no salaried doctor of their own, they 
gave us no continuous recognition or salary. So 
mission work must obviously come first. We 
were called to Shanghai to consider some impor- 
tant work in that city and upon our return to 
Nanking a telegram was placed in our hands 
telling us that the wife of this engineer was 
dangerously ill. A launch was waiting to 
hurry us up the country, but it could only take 
us two-thirds of the way. A construction train 
had to be depended upon for the remainder of 
the journey. They had been telephoning and 

[172] 



BUILDING A RAILROAD 

telegraphing for three days to get a doctor and 
finally sent special messengers to Nanking but 
no doctor was available there. Happily on the 
same train on which we had returned to Nanking 
from Shanghai was a physician whom the rail- 
road had just called. We accidently found this 
out and laid the case before him. He dropped 
his luggage and accompanied us on the launch. 
When we had reached its highest point of navi- 
gation we waited some hours for the construc- 
tion train to come down and unload. 

Upon reaching the city we found the patient 
in such a condition that it seemed wise to move 
her to a down-country hospital. It would not 
do to subject her to the jolting of a construction 
train, so we worked late in the evening to get a 
sailboat, fixing it up and getting the patient on 
board. She reached the foreign hospital but died 
within a few days, her husband coming back to 
his lonely task. Pew can measure the feeling of 
injustice which rankled deep in his heart. Yet 
even this did not arouse the railroad authorities 
to the negligence they were showing toward 
their employees. Before the line was finished 
two women and one engineer had died, another 
man was laid low with typhoid and others had 
lesser, though serious diseases, take hold upon 
them. 

But there is also a bright side to the work 
they did. They were pioneers in the opening up 
of lines of communication for China. They had 
exhilarating rides in the fine autumn mornings, 

[173] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

each one with his ten miles or more of construc- 
tion to oversee. The telephone was in almost 
continuous use in the evenings and all had the 
ear pieces off the hooks listening to what the 
others were discussing. At week-ends they made 
shift to get together in small groups. The Chin- 
ese would occasionally invite them to feasts. 
The country people everywhere flocked along 
the line to see what a railroad looked like, and 
some of the questions they would venture to ask 
through the interpreter were funny indeed. 

These men faced problems which taxed their 
skill and fired their ambitions. The Pukow ter- 
minus by the Yangtze River had to cross two 
miles of marsh and the new town had to be 
built upon the filled in marsh land. Ten feet of 
earth had to be added to raise the land above the 
river flood level. To do this millions of tons of 
earth must be brought down and dumped there. 
Some of the nearby Pukow hills began to dis- 
appear in consequence. The local gentry watch- 
ed the process until one day one ot them had the 
temerity to ask when the railroad was going to 
return the land to the hills. The engineers had 
their laugh but the railroad had to begin buying 
dirt elsewhere. 

The rock-bound Pukow hills took months to 
pierce. The Tung-ko low-lying paddy fields, five 
miles in width, had also to be filled in. When, in 
the dry weather they undertook to throw up 
embankments from the ground on either side, 
they thought they had an easy task. But when 

[174] 



BUILDING A RAILROAD 

the rains began the embankments melted back 
into the fields, flowing like slippery oil off both 
sides. They finally had to plant willows on eith- 
er side that the roots might hold up the earth. 
They drove piles down into the sands of the 
Ming-kwang River and built their concrete on 
the pile foundation. A summer flood came along, 
tipped over the concrete piers and dug up all 
the piles. It took work done through caissons 
before a foundation was laid which would stand 
these floods. An American engineer gave three 
years of steady work building the long bridge 
over the Hwai River. In the Rebellion of 1913 
this bridge came near being blown up by the re- 
bels. Only the quick wit and persistence of the 
British engineers averted the calamity. 

We Americans learned a new vocabulary 
from these British engineers. A handcar to them 
is a trolley, a tie a sleeper, a caboose a breakvan, 
a freight car a goods- wagon and a freight train a 
goods-train. They had guards instead of brake- 
men and engine drivers in place of engineers. 
Their railroad shops are called locomotive shops. 
Instead of having one grade of coaches and the 
same fare for all, or the addition of pullmans for 
the wealthy, they brought in first, second and 
third class accommodations. On some railroads 
even a fourth class was introduced. 

Towards the missionaries these men showed 
a fine spirit. They were interested in our work. 
In the beginning we were able to help them in 
many little ways. They drew on our recommen- 

[175] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

dation for local carpenters and masons in putting 
their quarters into shape. We shared the pro- 
ducts of our gardens and their servants were sent 
to us for medical treatment. 

On their hand, we always found a hearty- 
welcome when traveling their way. We had the 
use of their books and magazines. In emergen- 
cies, their telephones and, at times, special mes- 
sengers were offered us. Prom the results of 
their shooting trips pheasant and snipe often 
appeared on our tables. 

One of the engineers formed a special in- 
terest in Chinese paintings and ancient pottery. 
This man showed the possibility of finding re- 
creation and interest in the most barren of 
localities. For a time he was stationed in the 
most desolate piece of country to be found along 
the entire line. Scarcely a tree could be seen on 
the hills which rolled away on every side. Farm 
houses were scarce; there was almost nothing 
to relieve the monotony of the secnery and life 
about the spot. The people in the market town 
where he had his quarters were poor and un- 
attractive. It was well known, in addition, that 
a band of robbers had their headquarters there. 
It looked like a country where even the birds 
would be tempted to carry their ration as they 
flew over it. 

This university-bred engineer had, before 
he left his native land in Sweden, gathered a 
botanical collection of more than one thousand 
specimens, so he began studying the plant life 

[176] 



BUILDING A RAILROAD 

in this barren district. His temple home was 
early changed into a miniature zoo. Birds with 
broken wings, owls, heron, eagles, all were there. 
He built up an enclosure and filled it wifh 
captured snakes. Other people had made the 
declaration that no poisonous snakes existed in 
this part of China and he demonstrated that 
there were such. One day, when walking over 
to his temple home, we saw some workmen 
hurrying that way who were apparently swing- 
ing a rope as they hastened. It proved to be one 
of the big snakes which had escaped and which 
had just been recaptured. A strolling montebank 
came along one day with a bear which the en- 
gineer bought. He also adopted baby deer and 
purchased young foxes. One baby wolf he reared 
to full size and had him so tamed that he ran 
about the place with the dogs and showed 
characteristics similar to theirs. 

In times past the few Chinese paintings we 
had seen were mere daubs and we judged the 
painters as poor artists, lacking in sense of per- 
spective and proportion. When this engineer 
turned his interests to the studying of Chinese 
paintings we quickly learned that China has had 
great artists who have produced as wonderful 
paintings as those of Occidental nations. But 
his increasing collection of ancient Chinese 
pottery proved even more fascinating. He prob- 
ably gained the inspiration to start such a col- 
lection from specimens twelve hundred years old 
dug out of the earth thrown up from our city 

[177] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

moat. A section of this moat lay across the 
grounds the railroad bought for station purposes. 
As the men dug into the old mounds of dirt he 
offered them a reward for every perfect piece of 
old pottery they would turn up. Bowls and jars 
and cups used by the serfs who, centuries ago, 
had been employed in the digging of our moat 
and the erecting of our city's walls and had ac- 
cidentally been buried during the piling up of 
the refuse dirt, came to light. 

Following his usual custom, this engineer 
bought all books he could find which had been 
produced in the study others had given to this 
subject. He learned the distinguishing marks of 
various dynasties. From the varied collections 
which curio dealers brought to his door, he began 
slowly buying and swiftly comparing. There 
were relics from ancient graves. There were 
pots in which coin had been buried, even some of 
the long-buried coins themselves. There were 
pots made before the days when the Chinese 
learned the art of glazing, pots almost as old as 
those dug from the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh. 
This engineer not only entertained himself with 
this hobby, but he was able to delight his friends 
with it when they visited him. 

The railroad was ready for traffic by the 
spring of 1911. There was still a terminal depot 
to be built at Pukow when the filled marsh was 
solid enough. At other points the depots were 
finished. Warehouses, or godowns, as they are 
called in China, and side-tracks had yet to be 
[178] 



BUILDING A RAILROAD 

built in places. The rail had been made at the 
Hanyang Iron Works and they were laid on Japa- 
nese and American sleepers. Engines and some 
of the cars had been brought out from England 
in knockdown condition and rebuilt at Pukow. 
Oregon pine had found its way into many struc- 
tures. Cement had been brought from North 
China, Hongkong and Japan. As soon as traffic 
was opened passengers crowded the coaches and 
freight trains were insufficient to supply the de- 
mands. 

Suddenly the Revolution came. The station 
agents, telegraph operators and other salaried 
Chinese had come in from other provinces. They 
looked upon the people of our district as uncouth 
and half civilized. They had heard tales of the 
robber bands that infested the district and also 
that the local people were manufacturing swords, 
poniards and large knives. The rumor got about 
that the local people were going to attack them, 
so small groups of armed guards were placed at 
each station, of little avail if a body of the people 
should decide to make such an attack. The en- 
gineers began traveling up and down the line to 
hold things together and encourage the Chinese 
staff. At some places they would find the sta- 
tions deserted; the entire staff in fright had run 
away. Local rowdies and beggars flocked about 
the station and stole anything they found lying 
loose. These Chinese from the outside could 
not realize that the local people were as much 
afraid of robbers as they were and the manufac- 

[179] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

ture of local arms was for the purpose of self 
defence. It became a question with the engin- 
eers whether they could hold the line together 
and quiet the fears of their men. Soon it be- 
came a problem whether they could prevent 
the line from being taken up piecemeal and car- 
ried away. Often they would find iron spikes 
had been pulled and bolts taken from the coup- 
lings of the rails. Under such conditions traffic 
had to stop. The engineers kept engines, with 
their private coaches attached, traveling over the 
line. They sent some of their women folk to 
Shanghai, but with them there was no thought 
of running away from their task and they gradu- 
ally found a few Chinese who were filled with 
like courage. 

When Chang Hsun and his men were driven 
out of Nanking, they seized what cars they could 
find and fled two hundred miles up the line. 
Revolutionary leaders followed them part of the 
distance. Here and there dynamite was used to 
blow up a section of an unimportant bridge to 
prevent the return of Chang Hsun, an event 
which wild rumor constantly heralded. Even 
the engineers with their engine and coach had 
to cease traveling along the line. Then they fell 
back on telegraph and telephone until peace 
came. The government rewarded the engineers 
and Chinse staff for their fidelity to the task by 
giving them double salaries for the war period. 

All was running well again for a year or 
more. The damages to the line were repaired and 

[180] 



BUILDING A RAILROAD 

freight trains ran night and day pouring large 
revenue into the coffers of the government. The 
contracts with most of the engineers expired and 
a number of them returned to their native lands. 
Some took jobs with other railroads then being 
constructed. District engineers of this line be- 
came chiefs of newly projected lines. A limited 
number of the foreign staff were retained for 
keeping the line in order. 

In the summer of 1913 the railroad once 
more found itself involved in the war, becoming 
the war zone itself. At first the rebels captured 
the entire southern end of the line. Soon they 
had to retreat tov/ard Nanking. As they with- 
drew they blew up some of the bridges. The 
northern troops attached a few foreign engineers 
from the north to their staff and repaired the 
damaged bridges as rapidly as possible. The en- 
gineer-in-chief of the southern end of the line 
was at the time absent on leave. The acting 
chief did not care to have other engineers intro- 
duced into the construction or repair of their 
share of the line. Hearing of the destruction of 
bridges he hurried north, repairing them as he 
went. It was in the hottest time of an unusually 
hot summer. He came face to face with the 
northern forces who had halted their advance by 
one of the injured bridges. The German en- 
gineer from the north said it would take a month 
to repair, and our acting chief, knowing the ma- 
terial which he had back of him, after looking 
over the broken bridge, told the northern general 

[1811 



CillNA'S CROSSROADS 

that he would repair it in ten days if the general 
would give him full support. This was readily 
promised. 

Material was quickly brought to the place. 
Gangs of men pushed forward the construction 
night and day. The acting chief drafted in his 
engineers from other portions of the line. Two or 
three of them were at times prostrated by the 
heat and the strain under which they worked. 
The chief held through it all and made good his 
word to the general. We are happy to record that 
he was specially decorated by the government 
for the work he did in those nerve-trying days. 
The engineers who worked with him were also 
rewarded. 

The men who came out to the Orient in work 
of this kind are worthy of all honor. They were 
the forerunners and builders of better lines of 
communication. Theirs was a pioneer service 
and will be remembered long after China has put 
on the garb of modern civilization. They had to 
go through country which had never known the 
surveyor's transit. They had to find rivers and 
roads and towns which were not always where 
they were reported to be. They had to plan and 
construct. They had to rebuild engines and con- 
struct cars. They had to train Chinese to be the 
future road builders of their nation. They had to 
show contractors how to throw up embankments, 
how to dig foundations, how to do concrete work, 
and how to build buildings. The engineer in 
charge of the rolling stock had to train men in 

[182] 



BUILDING A RAILROAD 

the mysteries of running the locomotives. 
Guards, switchmen and line foremen had to be 
trained. Station masters were under their direc- 
tion to a lesser but necessary degree. Telegraph 
operators and train guards had to be held to 
a higher standard than the Chinese had ever 
known. 

These engineers were opening up China's 
highways and making famine and refugeeism a 
thing of the past. They were bringing China's 
products to the markets of the world. They it is 
who have been making possible the opening of 
her mines and other hitherto undeveloped re- 
sources. All the while they have been educating 
the Chinese in the dignity of labor, showing what 
real education can do for the uplift of the race. 
May more of their kind hear the call of needy 
China and come and take up the task. 



[183] 



XII 
A RANCH 

For thirty centuries the Chinese farmer has 
been turning over approximately three inches of 
surface soil with his plow. This implement with 
its single handle is similar to the ones used in 
Abraham's time. Along the Yangtse where the 
rice grows and the fields are flooded with water, 
the water buffalo is used for their plow animal. 
Farther north, where corn, wheat and barley 
flourish, they use cows, horses and donkeys for 
the purpose. The^ water buffalo is in his natural 
element when he lumbers into the water-flooded 
field, the farmer, his trousers pulled a bit higher 
under his belt, wading after him. After the rice 
is harvested the field is allowed to dry and wheat 
is sown. When the wheat harvest is past rice 
once more goes into the flooded field. On the up- 
lands the farmer plants wheat, barley, corn, 
beans, hemp and peanuts. 

The treeless land makes floods or drought a 
frequent cause of crop failure. These together 
with an occasional visit from locusts, the con- 
stant coming of the landlord and a frequent visit 
from such animal foes as rinderpest have led the 
farmer a hard chase. The bulk of the refugees 

[184] 



A RANCH 

who annually wander from one section of the 
country to another are recruited from among the 
farming class, a people who are, notwithstand- 
ing, among the most industrious, hardworking, 
frugal that the world knows. 

Along with the other changes which have 
been taking place in China there have been many 
attempts to improve farming methods. Agricul- 
tural schools have here and there been started, 
and some of them, as is to be expected, have died 
untimely deaths. Experimental farms have been 
started and often foreigners have been picked up 
to run them. Securing teachers or skilled labor- 
ers from among the foreigners who drift out to 
China has many drawbacks. One such was se- 
lected to start a sheep ranch. He wanted to buy 
the beginnings of a flock from Australia. Ac- 
companied by a Chinese he was sent down there. 
When they reached Manila the foreigner and the 
sheep money disappeared and the Chinese re- 
turned alone and empty handed. 

Professor Joseph Bailie, formerly connected 
with the University of Nanking, now with the 
Union University in Peking, began working 
among refugees in Nanking to interest the stu- 
dents in social service. A famine threw more 
people on his hands than any group of students 
could manage and he was compelled to give his 
entire time to working out practical plans to 
meet the need. He interested the officials here in 
a project for opening up mountain land near the 
city. The Governor there being later transferred 

[185] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

to Nanking, the capital of Anhwui Province, it 
was natural to consider opening up land in this 
province. Out of this has grown a farm colony 
at Laian, twenty miles away from Chuchow. It 
is under the direction of a China Inland mission- 
ary and the local gentry. 

Prom Professor Bailie's efforts also has 
come the Department of Agriculture and For- 
estry in the University of Nanking which is 
almost entirely supported from government or 
other funds subscribed in China. The Peking 
Government sent down many students and paid 
all bills. Sericulture has been added to this de- 
partment. Nurseries of young trees are being 
developed and distributed far and wide. Grains, 
vegetables and flowers are being acclimated, 
tested and introduced to China. 

The governor who was transferred from 
Nanking to Anking decided also to start an ex- 
perimental farm or ranch in Anhwui. His most 
difficult task was to find a suitable man to han- 
dle the project. It would be an intensely inter- 
esting subject to pursue if one were able to study 
the large group of foreigners from all lands who 
slip or drift into such ports as Shanghai, for, 
whatever reason each one has for landing in 
these Oriental ports, many of them have a single 
reason for not leaving, namely lack of funds. 
In their search for work they often fall upon 
unexpected fortune. 

One such man, nearly fifty years of age, 
was found who had been a cowboy in California. 

[186] 



A RANCH 

As a boy he had been left an orphan in Illinois. 
He had been bound out to a farmer who evident- 
ly did not know how to treat such a boy decent- 
ly. The boy stayed with the farmer until he 
was old enough to run away, then he gradually 
drifted to the West. What education he had 
was picked up but he could read the ordinary 
newspaper. On the western ranches he became 
a cowboy skilled in the knowledge of farm ani- 
mals. He learned farming by practicing it. 
Grains, trees, cattle, milk products, the erection 
of farm building, the handling of horses, were 
all studied in this practical way. 

One day, while rounding up some cattle, his 
horse stepped into a hole, broke its own leg 
and a number of bones in the body of his rider. 
It took a long time for the broken human bones 
to knit. Even after they were healed, the man 
found himself weak and with "something wrong 
inside," he knew not what. Doctors failed to 
help him. Some one recommended the mineral 
springs of Japan and he crossed the Pacific in 
search of health. A couple of years in Japan 
found him nearly well but at the end of his bank 
account. Nevertheless, from curiosity to see 
the Orient, he came across to Shanghai and there 
found a Chinese governor who wanted to start 
an experimental farm. They took each other 
somewhat on faith. 

For a month in the early spring of 1915 this 
man, with the representatives from the Gover- 
nor, sought for a suitable piece of country in 

[187] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

which to develop the proposed work. All 
through Eastern Anhwui is much land lying fal- 
low and owned by the government. It is more 
or less controlled by the elders of the district in, 
which it lies. They get some revenue from it 
by renting out portions to small farmers or by 
leasing out portions to fuel cutters. The pro- 
posal to utilize such land for a government farm 
would not be pleasing to most of the controllers 
as it would mean the loss of some revenue. 
These men, therefore, used methods for dis- 
couraging the taking up of land by this party 
of representatives from the Governor. 

For two years the Chuchow Reform Society 
had been carrying forward a number of uplift 
movements. Our city, as we have seen, nestles 
at the foot of extensive, but barren, mountains. 
If the purpose of the government was to en- 
courage the raising of cattle and horses we saw 
no better place than the unoccupied uplands. So 
we ventured to correspond with them and final- 
ly drew them to us. Even here, had it not been 
for the Reform Society, it is probable they 
would have been crowded out. These hills of 
ours annually yield tens of thousands of dol- 
lars in medicinal herbs which are shipped all 
over China. The wild grass of the hills fur- 
nishes the fuel used by the people. These things 
were financial items to be considered. Also 
upon the slopes of these hills are thousands of 
graves and family burial grounds. This was a 
religious question. Another consideration came 

[188] 



A RANCH 

from the fact that three famous resorts in these 
hills were places of recreation for the people in 
the spring and autumn. If the government 
should exempt the land for an experimental 
farm, would they have the same freedom of 
access to these places? A meeting opposing the 
project was called by the conservatives in the 
city. It was a very excited meeting but it col- 
lapsed when some one tried to get subscriptions 
for a fund to oppose the Governor's using this 
public land for a ranch. 

It was well along in the spring before our 
American ranchman was given opportunity to 
begin the development if his new project. Some 
plows were borrowed from the agricultural 
grounds in Nanking and water buffaloes with 
their drivers were rented from the farmers. A 
handful of men who had worked on the colony 
gounds in Nanking were also induced to help 
start the new plant. A student become the in- 
terpreter, for, if our ranchman had had no 
American schooling, it could not be expected 
that he would gain much of a knowledge of 
Chinese. A beautiful little knoll near an ancient 
copper mine was selected as the site for the 
erection of a group of buildings. Twenty thous- 
and acres of low mountains and three hundred 
acres of tillable land at their base were gradu- 
ally set apart for the ranch. It took much time, 
for the Chinese are never in a hurry. Some of 
the land was owned by private individuals who 
wanted to hold off for high prices. The govern- 

[189] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

ment finally decided to give such owners an an- 
nual rental instead of buying. A local company 
under the leadership of a Christian pastor had, 
for years, been developing a tract within the 
boundary. This had been done in large part 
that work might be given to deserving poor. 
With the government coming in as competitor 
they saw the unwisdom of continuing, so sold 
out to the ranch. 

The ranchman found many difficulties in- 
deed in his path. In all of his American experi- 
ences he had never met such troubles as these. 
In America, the methods and customs were such 
that they had become second nature to him. 
Many Oriental customs are antipodal to those 
he had habitually followed. America has a mini- 
mum of lazy men, China apparently a maximum. 
Many Chinese laborers sought jobs at the ranch; 
they seemed anxious to work. For three months 
he discharged them as rapidly as he hired them. 
They were after an easy job and good pay. They 
worked hard when he was looking and loafed 
when his back was turned. His Nanking trained 
foremen seemed to take this as a matter of 
course. His student interpreter found it impos- 
sible to explain the Chinese point of view. To 
the ranchman there was no ''Chinese point of 
view." He was boss and it was up to the inter- 
preter and foremen to see that the men obeyed 
and worked according to his methods and in- 
structions. Interpreting consists more than 
merely turning one form of speech into another. 

[190] 



A RANCH 

If a man has never seen a railroad it is useless 
merely to translate the word. A railroad must 
be explained and visualized before the man will 
understand what the speaker means; so with 
many things. 

The local people were intensely interested 
in this new acquisition to the district life. They 
had become familiar with missionaries who 
were college bred and had learned self control 
and to respect Oriental customs. Here was 
an American whose education had been wrung 
from bitter experience and who paw no reason 
for tolerating what seemed to him ridiculous 
ways of doing things. It is not an easy task to 
gain a knowledge of the Chinese language. It 
is ten times harder to adapt oneself to Chinese 
customs and it is impossible to do so without first 
learning to speak the language. Yet a man's 
usefulness to another race, if he is to work in 
their midst, depends upon his ability to meet 
them upon their own ground. This is just as 
true for a railroad engineer as for a missionary, 
or for an agent of the Standard Oil Company, as 
a foreign consul or a ranchman. This ranchman 
had lived a rough western life where rough men 
were compelled to tolerate in each other what 
they were unable to change. That was all right 
for America, but when he found himself alone in 
the midst of innumerable onlookers of another 
race, he ran up against undreamed-of obstacles. 

Crowds went out to see his foreign plows. 
His foreman thought it natural to stop and show 

[191] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

off the plow. He expostulated through his in- 
terpreter and the crowd fell back to allow the 
buffaloes to go on pulling the plow. He saw no 
reason why the ground should not be plowed 
clear to the base of the numerous grave mounds 
which dotted and scarred his new fields. Whole 
families gathered about their ancestors' graves 
and a full-fledged debating society would be sud- 
denly started, reasons for which were out of his 
grasp — and no interpreter could make them 
clear. He did not want hordes of people tramp- 
ling over the fields just turned up by the plow. 
Once or twice he threatened them with his whip 
and narrowly averted a small riot. 

Many times we walked the half hour walk 
between our home and his ranch and many 
more times he came to us. We understood his 
point of view and also knew how the Chinese 
looked at these things. His vocabulary was very 
limited but forceful. We had even to simplify 
our ordinary English when talking with him. 
His interpreter had gained his elementary 
knowledge of English in a mission school, but 
was learning a new variety from the ranchman. 
Among other things there came a plague of 
locusts which ate up the crops. One day the in- 
terpreter said to us in a very casual way, "We 
are having a hell of a time with the locusts." It 
was one of the milder forms of expression he 
was learning from his new teacher. We deter- 
mined mentally that, if ever we were called upon 
to find a foreign employee for the Chinese gov- 

[192] 



A RANCH 

ernment, we would seek for a college bred man 
who knew how to use decent English. The 
ranchman had lived a bachelor life and found 
the loneliness of interior China too much for 
him. One day he came back from Shanghai 
bringing a Japanese woman with him. The 
Chinese have no love for the Japanese people, 
nor do they look with favor upon the mixing of 
races, so this move did not raise the ranchman 
in their estimation. 

The ranchman preferred to use local car- 
penters and masons to build his bungalow and 
stock buildings. All had to be erected with brick, 
as timber is very scarce. We had had years of 
experience with local men and knew their skill 
was hardly equal to the task of the better build- 
ings. We plainly told him so when he came to 
us about it. He decided to try them out on 
some of the rougher buildings and asked us to 
aid in drawing up the contracts. By this time 
he had found it impossible to do extensive work 
without consulting us. So he asked that we act 
as adviser in the construction of buildings. There 
seemed no way out of it if the ranch was to 
succeed at all. What he would have done had 
the plant been placed in some remote corner 
with no other foreigner handy we can only con- 
jecture. We had a long and difficult task on our 
hands. Long accustomed ourselves to the slow 
moving builders, we had learned to watch out 
for tricks. It was all new to him, he was learn- 
ing patience in the school of experience and all 

[193] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

would have come out well had not another very 
usual complication arose. There are always 
some interested parties hanging about who will 
try to make trouble if they are not given a little 
"squeeze." Since this was a government job 
these characters were more numerous than 
usual. The carpenters and masons saw no 
reason why they should spend more of their con- 
tract price on these people than necessary. In 
the end these disgruntled and disappointed para- 
sites hatched up a charge against the contractor 
and he had to lose some hundreds of dollars. 
Unfortunately a new magistrate had been placed 
in office who was only too ready to back up such 
nefarious schemes. 

While his buildings were being erected, the 
ranchman had pushed forward the planting of 
his first crops. Rice had been the common crop 
in the land formerly tilled. The ranchman 
had no interest in this crop, he broke up the 
small terraced rice patches, leveled the dividing 
banks and enlarged the fields. He drove his 
American plows to twice the depth of the Chin- 
ese plow and turned up the long undisturbed 
rich subsoil. His first wheat crop was the great- 
est ever seen in the district. He set his men to 
digging deep ditches and turned age-old marshes 
into producing fields. 

Lying in one of the mountains valleys is a 
forest of some forty acres, owned by the monas- 
tery which is situated in its midst. The leading 
priest is one of the few priests in China who has 
[194] 



A RANCH 

some education and initiative. In these days 
when the Chinese have largely ceased support- 
ing their temples by subscriptions he has made 
his place self-supporting by forest conservancy 
and by the developing of the open land belong- 
ing to the monastery. He is less of a priest than 
a manager. Prom the forest he has furnished 
such firewood as the richer people use. He has 
made charcoal kilns and burned lime. Some of 
his wheat fields lie on the very top of the moun- 
tain range. 

This single forest stands alone in all this 
country. The remainder of the hills have been 
given over to fuel cutters who not only denude 
them of the wild grass but cut down every grow- 
ing shrub and sweep them over annually with 
fire. Tree roots in the ground have struggled 
for ages to grow, but annually their shoots have 
been cut out and sold for fuel. Even some of the 
roots have yearly been grubbed up and sold in 
the city. The first act of the ranchman was to 
forbid the grubbing up of roots or the cutting of 
tree sprouts. He shipped in fruit trees and 
planted a great orchard. Mulberry trees were 
set out along the sides of the streams. Timber 
producing trees were planted on the mountain 
sides. If protection is continued over these in 
another twenty years the barren hills will be 
covered with extensive forests. 

When his buildings were completed our 
ranchman had an eighty-foot horsebarn with 
loft; cowstables, two hundred feet in length; two 

[195] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

chicken houses for five hundred hens; a hog 
stable with stone wall enclosure for about two 
hundred porkers, a warehouse, a foreman's 
quarters, and a comfortable bungalow. The 
grounds about these buildings had been changed 
from barren upland to orchards and gardens. A 
vehicle road into the city had been leveled. 

Meantime, upon the suggestion of the pro- 
vincial governor, he had drawn up a five year 
prospectus of what he planned to do. The gov- 
ernment was devoting forty thousand dollars to 
the establishment of the plant. The ranchman 
figured upon the productiveness of his fields, his 
orchards, his stock, and the figures showed that 
in a short time, he would not only be paying all 
expenses but, by the end of the five years, the 
ranch would be paying considerable interest on, 
the outlay. He saw no reason why he could not 
employ California methods to the Chuchow dis- 
trict with exactly the same results. He believed 
that the rinderpest which so frequently afflicts 
the cattle of the local farmers could be kept away 
from his stock by pasturing them on the hills. 
He thought he could grow silo corn, timothy 
grass, clover and alfalfa and cure it and stack it 
as he had always done in America. Cattle 
which had always fed upon rice straw, bean 
vines and bran, he thought could be kept in 
healthy condition feeding upon the wild grass of 
the hills. The Chinese are used to the heavy 
rains and penetrating dampness of the summer 
months and take special precautions for curing 

[196] 



A RANCH 

their straw and fodder. He had never experi- 
enced a summer in China and saw no reason for 
learning from ignorant coolies, so he went for- 
ward trusting in his own American experiences. 

Meantime he had come to his first autumn 
and with his barns ready for stock, started north 
to find cattle and horses. Chinese are proverb- 
ially strong in raising prices on strangers, be 
they Oriental or Occidental, so he had to pay 
more for his stock than he had figured. A north- 
ern snow storm found him miles away from the 
railroad to which he was driving hie newly pur- 
chased stock. He got them to the railroad and 
back to his farm, but his body, which had lost its 
former endurance by reason of the long con- 
valescence following his accident, could not 
stand the exposure and he had been using a con- 
siderable amount of alcoholic drinks all the time. 
This exposure, which formerly would have been 
thrown off without trouble, this time kept him in 
the house for a month and revealed both a bad 
heart and diseased kidneys. The Japanese 
woman whom he now introduced to all visitors 
as his wife, faithfully nursed him through the 
trying days. Indeed, he would hardly have been 
able to pull through without her. 

His practice had been to rise early each 
morning and ride from one end of his cultivated 
fields to the other. During the day he had kept 
his horse in saddle and personally directed all 
of the work. He could no longer do this, conse- 
quently the workmen slackened their energies 

[197] 



CHINA^S CROSSROADS 

and the foreman did not show enthusiasm in 
keeping the work going. They had not found 
their master to their liking. He had too often 
asked impossible things of them. The second 
summer did not find the ranch going smoothly. 
The ranchman was often irritated because of the 
slackness of the men, because of what he sus- 
pected was going on behind his back, and be- 
cause he himself did not have the energy to push 
forward the work as he had hoped. He had put 
up many miles of wire fence, especially wiring 
in the orchards and gardens about his house, 
so outside curiosity seekers did not trouble him 
as formerly. Still, at times, they would get over 
his barriers. 

The heavy rains of that second summer in- 
jured both his grain and his fodder which he had 
persisted in harvesting and stacking with the 
ordinary American methods. His cattle failed 
to do well on the wild grass of the hills. Money 
was slipping out of his hands through the usual 
Chinese underhand channels. Most of all he had 
not been able to win the confidence and whole 
hearted support of his assistants. He had 
wanted them to work his way and was unwilling 
to learn things from them. In the autumn and 
winter many of his cattle died, either of disease 
or rinderpest. Our furlough time had come and 
he lost the medical support for the year. He 
tried to doctor himself and, at the same time 
hold his own with the Chinese. He sank most 
of his own earnings into the plant temporarily to 

[198] 



A RANCH 

bridge over the losses. The following summer 
he was taken down with an abscess of the liver, 
was taken to the foreign hospital in Nanking, 
but his weakened body could not longer stand 
the strain and he passed away. 

This was a sad ending to a hopeful govern- 
ment experiment, and the Chinese needed such 
an experimental plant badly. Eighty five per 
cent of the nation are tilling the same soil. That 
they could maintain the fertility of the soil 
through so many generations is a marvel to us. 
Yet anyone who has given the matter considera- 
tion can see that the land is not producing one 
half of what it might. With such a great popu- 
lation, the amount of grain produced in China 
means life or death to the pepole. This ranch- 
man demonstrated that deeper plowing, proper 
ditching and underdraining, the selection of bet- 
ter seed, the planting of orchards and the grow- 
ing of trees on the mountains can more than 
double the products of the land. He did not real- 
ize that there were some things he must learn 
concerning the people and the country, and be- 
cause of these he failed and died a failure. 

Without even a common school education, 
this man had come to a strange land and under- 
taken to work out the scheme of the provincial 
governor. He had to handle forty workmen to 
whom all of his instructions must go through an 
interpreter. Neither the interpreter nor the men 
had ever seen a farm run on an American plan. 
They only knew how to do it in the Chinese way. 

[199] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

He could not understand the reasons for such 
crass disobedience or ignorance and was con- 
stantly irritated. The workmen learned many 
forcible expressions by hearing them so fre- 
quently uttered, and they knew he was cursing 
them. His vigorous gestures and angry expres- 
sion told them that without the aid of an inter- 
preter. No man can gain faithful service through 
such a method. 

We honored this man for the hard work he 
did in putting up buildings, selecting seed, cul- 
tivating ground, buying stock and, altogether for 
dealing in a straight forward manner. "My 
word is as good as my bond" was his oft re- 
peated Americanism. But the longer we watch- 
ed him the more we realized that, for a man with 
his education and training, the task was an im- 
possible one. His coarseness was even more re- 
pulsive to the educated Chinese with whom he 
had to deal than it was to us who had been some- 
what familiar with such characters in our young 
manhood. 

The Chinese know the value of experimen- 
tal farms. The young men who work as assist- 
ants or laborers on such farms may, in a few 
years, be able to go out and revolutionize Chinese 
farming methods to the betterment of Chinese 
production. But the Americans or other for- 
eigners who succeed with these experiments 
must have a very different training and educa- 
tion than this man had. China has learned 
the value of Christian character and wants men 

[200] 



A RANCH 

of that type. Farming demands strength of 
character and a peculiar type of culture. China 
needs men who will appreciate her problems and 
who will enter such service as true missionaries. 
Some of the missionary societies have answered 
the appeals for such men and some missionaries 
are already on the job delving into China's soil. 
Through no finer methods can the farming 
classes of China be led to appreciate the neces- 
sity of the Gospel for the redemption of China's 
lands and people. 



[201] 



XIII 
MEDICAL MINISTRY TO THE MISSIONARY 

There is a saying which used to be frequent- 
ly heard; **The blood of the martjTS is the seed 
of the Church." Not so many years ago some of 
our most ardent missionary supporters and sec- 
retaries were given to saying, *'We need more 
missionary graves on the mission fields." They 
believed that every death of a missionary on the 
foreign field meant a hundred fold harvest in 
new converts, and led many other young people 
to consecrate themselves to the heroic task of 
evangelizing the world for Christ. There is no 
doubt that the death of a consecrated missionary 
does bear fruitage, but the fruitage has been 
chiefly shown in the stirring up of the churches 
to larger gifts and in leading more young people 
to volunteer for the service. 

A few years ago a young doctor started on 
the long journey from America to the Tibetan 
border. A group of missionaries out there were 
looking forward with intense eagerness to his 
coming. One doctor was there but he sorely 
needed a partner in the medical work. The new 
recruit, who became known as the "Little Doc- 
tor," because he was small in comparison to the 

[202] 



MEDICAL MINISTRY TO THE MISSIONARY 

stature of the other doctor with whom he was to 
be associated, while taking the long journey to 
the ''Roof of the World" wrote a diary and that 
diary has inspired many another consecrated 
Christian worker. 

The Little Doctor safely reached his destin- 
ation and great was the joy of that isolated 
group of workers when they had the privilege 
of welcoming him to their midst. A Chinese 
teacher was found and he sat down to his study 
of the Oriental language. Scarcely two months 
passed when, one morning, he was taken down 
with a raging fever. It did not take long to 
find that not only typhoid but smallpox had 
taken hold upon him. The Big Doctor at once 
isolated his patient, going into quarantine him- 
self that he might care for his associate. The 
daily meals and other needs were passed to them 
over an intervening wall. Only a few days 
passed when as the wife of the Big Doctor went 
out to inquire how the patient had passed the 
night, she heard her own husband sobbing. The 
Little Doctor had gone Home thus early in his 
unselfish service. 

The Tibetans were not stirred over his 
death. They had had no opportunity either to 
know him or his purpose toward them. There 
had been established no bonds of sympathy. Why 
should they be stirred over his death? What 
was he to them? His fellow missionaries buried 
him up there in the mountains beside the road 
over which he had come to their station. On his 

[203] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

tomb they inscribed in English, Chinese and 
Tibetan, ''Greater love hath no man than this, 
that a man lay down his life for his friends." 
Some day when the Tibetans come to understand 
the message he had hoped to bear to them they 
may be stirred by the sight of that lonely tomb. 

But when the cablegram reached America 
bearing the news of his death and the message 
was sent to the church from which the Little 
Doctor had gone out, another young doctor sit- 
ting in the pews heard the message as a call to 
his own heart and he quickly sent the question to 
the missionary society, "Can I go and take his 
place?" He went and today is trying to fill the 
place the Little Doctor had hoped to fill. Through 
him "he being dead, yet speaketh." 

The task of the missionary of to-day is the 
building up of the Church of Christ in these dark- 
ened lands. This is a task of years. It cannot 
be done by filling early graves. No business could 
prosper if the managers were changed every 
year or so. No church is likely to grow if it 
changes its pastor often. Modern Christian 
workers have no desire to fill untimely graves. 
Their task is too great. If there are still those 
in the homeland who think the cause of Christ 
can be better advanced by such a method — well, 
the missionaries are not even willing that they 
should have the privilege of coming to the field 
to fill such graves. The men and women who 
are able to give twenty, forty and fifty years to 

[204] 



MEDICAL MINISTRY TO THE MISSIONARY 

the mission field are the ones who will be blessed 
by seeing the work of their hands prosper. 

We need men like Goodrich, Sheffield and 
Mateer of North China who, after long years of 
service, have produced Chinese with great Chis- 
tian power, men who are leading forward the 
Church in China. We need such men as Dr. 
Macklin who, after more than thirty years spent 
in Nanking, has permanently connected his 
name with the salvation and uplift of that city. 
We need lives like J. Hudson Taylor, the man 
who founded and saw the China Inland Mission 
grow until it has a thousand loyal workers 
spread abroad in every province. Some of these 
men are to-day filling missionary graves, but 
they did not fill the graves until they had been 
living epistles known and read among the Chi- 
nese for many decades. 

To produce a missionary requires many 
thousands of dollars. The training may have 
begun back in the lives of his ancestors three 
and four generations removed. The missionary 
himself has passed, at the expense of govern- 
ment and parents, through all the grades of the 
public school. He has gone on into college and 
university. Through all of these years money 
has been invested in his life, awaiting the day 
when his earning capacity can be of use to the 
world. Then interest on the investment will be- 
gin coming back. His food, clothing, school 
books, doctor's bills and many other expenses 
necessary to fit him as an educator, doctor and 

[205] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

preacher, will at a conservative estimate amount 
at his graduation to ten or twenty thousand 
dollars. Meantime he has not turned back to his 
home, town, college or university any interest on 
all that has been expended upon him. It is just 
as good a business principle to expect that the 
capital thus invested in his life become a paying 
investment, as it is to invest a iJke amount in a 
manufacturing establishment. If he is true to 
the standards of common honor and has his 
health, somewhere in this broad world he must 
pay back the investment. 

We send an educated and cultivated young 
couple to China. We pay the expense of their 
outfit, of their voyage, of their first two years 
when they are learning the new language and 
customs of the people. Just as they have be- 
come fitted to take up responsibility in the task 
to which they have been assigned, the husband 
dies. Perhaps meantime a little one has come 
to the new home they are setting up. The wife 
may be compelled, for this reason, to return to 
the homeland, at least until her little one is old 
enough for her to do such special work. Can the 
Church of Christ in China or in any other land 
be built up in this way? Can another man be 
sent out who will at once be able to take the 
place made vacant? Can a new recruit fill the 
place of a missionary who has spent five or ten 
years on the field? 

Not counting the large financial investment 
in homes, churches, schools and hospitals which 

[206] 



MEDICAL MINISTRY TO THE MISSIONARY 

missionary societies have built in China, we 
have here six thousand missionaries In whom 
the Christian world has in their training invest- 
ed not less than sixty millions of dollars. We 
have sent them into a land known to be unsani- 
tary; a land in which contagious diseases run 
rife. These missionaries have established 
homes and in these homes have come not less 
than four thousand children. The missionary 
voluntarily took up the risks which such a life 
impose. But have we the right to say that these 
children shall be compelled to run greater risks 
than the children in the homeland? Have they 
not as much right to health and long^ life as any 
children born in the homeland itself? 

American and British missionary societies 
have come to recognize the business aspect of 
missions. During the past few years the call for 
medical missionaries has increased, yet the lat- 
est statistics available show but little more than 
three hundred and fifty medical missionaries in 
China. Not the least of the services rendered 
by these men and women is the work they are 
doing to protect the life and health of their fel- 
low missionaries. 

The situation today is about as follows: 
the six thousand missionaries of all protestant 
societies have established homes in about six 
hundred cities in China. The medical men and 
women have established medical work in 180 of 
these six hundred cities. So there are still over 
four hundred cities in China in which mission- 

[207] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

aries live and work and in which are located no 
medical co-workers. Some of these places are 
two, three, five, and even ten days' distance 
from a medical man. If a missionary in such a 
place falls sick, he must wait that length of time 
and usually more before a physician can reach 
him, or before he may reach the doctor. This 
shows that the missionary societies are still 
caring very inadequately for the great invest- 
ment they hold in human lives, trained lives. 
Yet let us see of how much value the doctor is 
to the work. We have at hand the statistics of 
one mission. 

This mission has carried on work in China 
for over thirty years. Over eighty men and 
women have been sent out during this time. The 
average number on the field at any one time has 
been thirty-five. More than eighty children have 
been growing up in the homes of the mission- 
aries. Ten of the missionaries have died during 
the thirty years. The first died during the early 
days when the entire force was compelled to live 
under unsanitary conditions. They were given 
little opportunity during the hot summer days to 
get away from their stations. These four mis- 
sionaries gave an average of seven and a half 
years to evangelizing China. Undoubtedly two 
of them could have been saved had they had the 
same health protections which the missionaries 
of today enjoy. Of the other two, one died from 
drowning and the other of typhus contracted 
from refugees to whom he had been daily minis- 

[208] 



MEDICAL MINISTRY TO THE MISSIONARY 

tering. The last six who have died gave an 
average of more than twenty-two years to the 
building up of the Church in China. 

Of the eighty children in the mission three 
died previous to the year 1901. Two of these 
could have been saved under the present day 
conditions. From 1901 to 1917 only one child 
died. In 1917 one child, while in school in 
Shanghai, contracted scarlet fever and passed 
away. In 1919 another babe, less than a year 
old, died from heart lesion. During these years 
since the Boxer Rebellion it has been the estab- 
lished custom that all mothers and their chil- 
dren spend their summers in Ruling or Mokan- 
shan, up in the mountains where the nights are 
cool and the water pure. They were thus iso- 
lated from the epidemics of dysentery and 
cholera which every summer carried off count- 
less numbers of the Chinese and their children. 
Their bodies were kept in such health that it was 
easy to resist disease the remainder of the year. 
Since then, one or two have had smallpox in a 
light form. One has had relapsing fever and 
numbers of them have had short sieges from 
malaria. Those who have gone to the homeland 
to complete their education, have easily taken 
their place beside the school children of equal 
age, often surpassing them in their studies. On 
the athletic field they have likewise proved their 
capabilities to stand up to the best. They have, 
in short, been granted their inalienable rights to 
life and health. 

[209] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

How has this change been brought about? 
It has been done by giving health education to 
the missionaries themselves, to the missionary 
societies and even to the churches who are 
sending out the new men and women. Young 
missionaries have had to return early to the 
homeland, either because the home society was 
too careless in the physical examination of 
candidates, or because the new missionary would 
not take the counsel given and be careful of his 
health during the days when he was becoming 
acclimated to the new land. He forgot that he 
was nearer the equator, that the sun was more 
directly over his head, that there was more dust 
in the air during certain seasons, and that there 
were sudden changes from extreme heat to cool- 
ness. He neglected to take into consideration 
that China is a treeless land, or nearly so; that 
the streets are full of decaying vegetable matter, 
that the numerous ponds make mosquitoes om- 
nipresent, and that flies make Chinese food dan- 
gerous to eat in summer. 

The Chinese are accustomed to the pres- 
ence of fleas and many varieties of lice. Es- 
pecially is this true among the poor, and the 
poor are everywhere in China. There is no such 
thing in the land as quarantine. Children, in 
the scaling period of smallpox, are carelessly al- 
lowed about the street and among crowds of 
people. We have over and over again, found 
them with their parents sitting in the church 
service. Owing to the manner in which the 

[210] 



MEDICAL MINISTRY TO THE MISSIONARY 

gardeners pour night soil on the gardens, 
Chinese vegetables readily convey intestinal 
diseases. It has been difficult for some new 
missionaries to understand why they could not 
eat some such vegetables uncooked. They found 
out however, when their walks took them into 
the vegetable gardens. The old missionary 
boils all of his drinking water and all of the milk 
used by his family. Some times this seems 
much trouble for nothing. Why should there be 
so much washing of hands and changing of cloth- 
ing and the wearing of cork or pith helmets? 
Missionary societies have now come to recognize, 
also, the importance of screening the homes of 
all missionaries. 

Even with all of these precautions, it has 
not always been possible to shut out disease. 
During the spring days mothers have been loathe 
to allow their children to attend Sunday ser- 
vices. So many infections are to be found 
among the audience. Yet the children have been 
known to pick up germs from a Chinese child 
passing the door of the compound while the for- 
eign child was looking out upon the street. We 
were called recently to see a virulent smallpox 
case in a hut which had been pitched by the side 
of the street but a few rods away from the mis- 
sion compound. 

The doctors have found their walls of pro- 
tective influence are insufficient when they are 
composed of brick eight feet high built around 
the missionary home. This has been especially 

[211] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

true when the intense early summer heat beats 
down upon the defenceless heads of the children 
who will run out while mother is not looking. 
The resistance of the body to disease is much less 
at that time. The necessity for summer sana- 
taria became apparent years ago, and places all 
over China have since been opened. There is 
Pei-te-ho on the seashore in the north; Ruling 
and Chi-kung-shan in the mountains along the 
Yangtse River; Mo-kan-shan, a low mountain 
not far from Hangchow; Kuliang near Foochow, 
and other places less known. Before the open- 
ing of these places, the missionaries gathered in 
large centers would find themselves, as summer 
approached, asking under their breath, '*Who 
will be the one to fall this summer?" Today 
sick missionaries are sent to these places to re- 
cuperate and the longer sick-leave furlough to 
the homeland is made unnecessary for most of 
them. 

Nanking has its large hospitals for Chinese 
sick. It also has a hospital specially erected for 
the sick among the foreigners, the gift of 
a missionary as a memorial to his little son 
who was taken away from him. In this hospital 
operations are now performed for conditions for 
which it was formerly thought necessary to send 
the patient home. Diseases have been caught in 
time and the missionary has been put back to his 
work in a shorter time than it would have taken 
to make the journey home. We recall two cases 
of incipient cancer. Operation was performed in 

[212] 



MEDICAL MINISTRY TO THE MISSIONARY 

time and both patients are alive and active in the 
work. In the mountains in Ruling a hospital 
has been established for the single purpose of 
caring for foreign patients. Tubercular mis- 
sionaries go to their cottages in those mountains 
and remain for a year or two and then are able 
to come down into the valley and again take up 
their work. There has also been built a tuber- 
cular hospital for Chinese and numerous edu- 
cated Chinese workers have been saved by it 
for longer life service. 

The doctors have not been satisfied with 
these measures alone. In the homeland we 
know that if we would keep out infectious dis- 
eases we must co-operate with our neighbors and 
establish town or city boards of health. We have 
gone farther there and have the state and Na- 
tional health departments. We have learned 
more perfectly during the war that international 
health work adds to the perfectness of such pre- 
cautions. Men have gone to Cuba and Mexico 
to fight yellow fever. They have gone to Man- 
churia to fight the pneumonic plague. They have 
gone to Servia in the interest of all mankind 
that typhus might be put down. Ellis Island and 
San Francisco isolation departments will not 
keep disease out of the United States. In order 
to keep out diseased immigrants and travelers 
we must co-operate with all nations. 

It is likewise impossible to shut disease 
away from our missionary homes by the building 
of brick walls about our gardens and by traveling 

[213] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

to the mountains in summer. Disease among the 
Chinese people must be checked. This cannot 
be accomplished by such work as we have in the 
past done in our hospitals and dispensaries. The 
giving of drugs and advice as to how to eat will 
not eradicate disease. Preventative measures 
must do that. When smallpox came to our city 
we CO operated with the local officials in a cam- 
paign for general vaccination and not only saved 
our children but theirs. When cholera came the 
magistrate refused to co-operate and we could 
only wait helplessly by, ministering to any at- 
tacked person brought to us, but powerless to 
prevent its attacking others. One school boy can 
spread trachoma through a school. The only pre- 
ventative means we have found is to draw the 
teachers and pupils into a class in hygiene and 
school sanitation. Tuberculosis has been lessened 
by teaching the schoolboys and girls how to 
breathe properly, how to stand erect, and how to 
exercise regularly. A new race of men and 
women is growing up in China. 

Western trained doctors in China are few in 
number, but persistently there is growing in 
their hearts a great ambition. They are length- 
ening the lives and usefulness of their fellow 
workers. They are giving the foreign children 
their rights to health. They are annually treat- 
ing fifty thousand inpatients and a million and a 
half outpatients. They are training assistants. 
Some of them are translating medical works. 
Groups of them are gathered into medical col- 

[214] 



MEDICAL MINISTRY TO THE MISSIONARY 

leges for bringing the knowledge of western 
medicine to a new race of young Chinese doc- 
tors. Besides all of these tasks they are planning 
and slowly carrying out a campaign the results 
of which will in the next half century make 
China as sanitary as America. 

We remember Dr. Jackson who gave his life 
in the fight against pneumonic plague. We think 
of Dr. Hart and Dr. Lucy Gaynor who contracted 
typhus from ministering to refugee patients and 
laid down their lives as a result. We think of 
Dr. Butchart who literally wore out his life in his 
ministry as an eye specialist both to Chinese and 
foreigners. We think of the great volumes of 
prayer which have ascended to the gates of 
Heaven from all classes of people when these 
noble workers were prostrated with disease. 
Their lives went out, but their works do live 
after them. They were able to live long enough 
to imitate the spirit of the Master so clearly 
that the Chinese will not let their memory pass 
away. Their fellow workers are we§,ring paths 
to their graves and keeping them fresh with 
flowers. These sought to carry out the command 
of Christ who said, *'As the Father hath sent Me, 
so send I you." 



[215] 



XIV 

CHINA'S CALL TO AMERICA 

It was a dangerous and far reaching experi- 
ment when our forefathers decided to establish 
a democratic form of government, when they 
declared that "life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness" are the inalienable rights of all men. 
Did they dream that a time would come when 
people from other nations would flock to "the 
land of the free" at the rate of a million a year? 
Did they realize with what power their mo- 
mentous decision would affect all nations of the 
earth? Did they have the prophetic vision that 
could foresee the present tendency of the world 
toward the same form of government? 

To work out the principles of self-govern- 
ment our forefathers sought isolation. Wash- 
ington advised that no permanent alliances with 
other nations be formed. For a hundred years 
we asked only to be let alone. But other peoples 
would not let us alone. An ever increasing host 
of intelligent people believed in the proposition 
even before we had worked it out. Indeed, it can 
be truly said that we have not yet worked it out. 
But to these peoples born and reared in other 
nations America has constantly been a Promised 

[216] 



CHINA'S CALL TO AMERICA 

Land. So America could not isolate herself 
from other nations. Her experiment worked 
so well she became a leading, if not the leading 
nation of the world. As such she must consent 
to take a leading part in working out world prob- 
lems. America has long been a refuge for op- 
pressed people. She is now being asked to be a 
refuge, figuratively, for oppressed nations. God 
has made her a leader in democracy; so she must 
send out her sons and daughters as specialists in 
democracy. They must give aid to these nations 
in the development of the same ideal. 

It is not America's own need which should 
compel her thus to go out and form alliance with 
other nations. For her own sake she does not 
need spheres of influence nor plots of territory in 
other lands. It was their need and not hers 
which led to the freeing of Cuba, to the occupy- 
ing of the Philippines and Porto Rico and to the 
purchasing of certain islands from Denmark. It 
was the need in the Philippines which caused 
America to send a thousand teachers there who, 
in a decade, did more to lift up the Filipinos 
than Spanish officials and residents had done in 
four hundred years. 

Yet, if the people of the United States are to 
see the homeland grow unto that perfection 
which may be hers, there must, for her sake as 
well as the sake of others, be this going, reach- 
ing out to the weak and struggling nations. It 
was with something of this spirit that American 
doctors went into Cuba and Mexico to study and 

[217] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

fight yellow fever. It was the same compelling 
force which sent others into Servia to fight 
typhus. It was that compelling force which led 
Hoover to give himself for the feeding of Europe. 
That was the ultimate compelling force which 
led Americans to enter the world war. There 
was no other way by which the world could be 
safe for democracy, either in America or in an- 
other part of the world. No man can attain unto 
his highest ideals unless he lifts others with 
himself. No nation can gain and hold among 
the nations of the earth superiority in wealth, 
government and morals unless its beneficent in- 
fluences are extended to the weaker nations. 
"No man liveth unto himself;" neither can any 
nation do so. 

We believe many of the statesmen and 
leaders in America have recognized this in our 
nation's relations with China. When, after the 
Boxer outbreak, other nations were demanding 
large indemnities, America turned hers back, 
using it for the establishing of schools, and that 
China's youth might cross the Pacific and enter 
American colleges. When famines came to 
China, America organized relief. America sent 
an opium commission to study the conditions in 
the Philippines. This led her to call a world 
opium commission to sit at Shanghai and China 
was given power and aid in abolishing the opium 
traffic. American and British doctors working 
in China combined in helping China form Red 
Cross work for the following up of the armies in 

[218] 



CHINA'S CALL TO AMERICA 

the Revolution and Rebellion. Our mission hos- 
pitals were freely offered for caring for the 
wounded and sick. And America was the first 
great power to recognize the new Republic of 
China. In these years of construction American 
missionaries have been in the forefront in reform 
movements. 

Yet the American government has shown a 
lamentable weakness in her interest in Oriental 
affairs. As long as it was a case of philanthropy 
or sentiment, the American Government could 
extend to the Chinese the helping hand. So her 
universities were open to Chinese students. Com- 
mercial commissions were organized on both 
sides of the Pacific and fostered by America. 
Mutual recognition of republics was an easy 
matter, and the floating of flags from all public 
buildings was also a beautiful tribute. But when 
it came to a place where it would be necessary 
for the American Government to protect Ameri- 
can trade interests or investments in China, as 
other countries were willing to do for their 
countrymen, such protection was refused. The 
American Red Cross proposed to put an end to 
the ever recurring famines in the Hwai region by 
opening up the old mouth of that river. They 
employed an American engineer to make pre- 
liminary surveys and estimates to see if the 
scheme was feasible. All this the American 
Government approved. But when it became 
necessary to finance the scheme and financiers 
wanted security for the money they were willing 

[219] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

to invest in it, the American government was 
unwilling to promise the necessary security, as it 
might lead to the using of diplomatic pressure 
upon a weak and vacillating Oriental Govern- 
ment. 

Japan has openly and secretly sought the 
influence which America has had in China. She 
has made repeated advances to groups of the 
people and to the Chinese Government. She has 
been willing to give security to the investments 
made by her nationals in China, even when those 
investments were made contrary to treaty and 
without China's consent. All of her relation- 
ships with China have been so manifestly selfish 
that she has excited in the Chinese the bitterest 
animosity. If China had agreed to all the un- 
righteous demands which Japan tried to force 
upon her, because China was the weaker nation, 
China would long ago have lost all her national 
freedom and would have passed, like Korea, un- 
der the suzerainty of Japan. In the face of this 
known antipathy of the Chinese for the Jap- 
anese, a writer in one of our magazines, after re- 
viewing the political and trade conditions in 
China, made the strange and un-American sug- 
gestion that we should give all possible aid to 
Japan in obtaining this control of China as it 
would increase our trade with the Orient. Such 
action would be betraying one in the house of his 
friends. We are sure, especially after the light 
upon the Shantung question which has been 
given the American public, that they would not 

[220] 



CHINA'S CALL TO AMERICA 

consent to such an unrighteous, undemocratic 
and unchristian act 

The Chinese have, in the past, shown them- 
selves to be a virile people. They have retained 
a strong national spirit through many gener- 
ations. They have over and over absorbed their 
conquerors, for example, the Mongols and Man- 
chus. They have a right to glory in their long 
history as a nation. They have always kept edu- 
cation to the forefront, even from the days when 
they were coexistent with the Hebrews and 
Egyptians as nations. Their textbooks have 
always held up morals and right conduct. They 
were taught to honor their parents and render 
allegiance to their rulers. It has been such his- 
tory and such education which has made them 
marvels in the world of diplomacy. 

They amazed the world when they threw off 
the opium traffic. America fought the liquor 
traffic for fifty years. China abolished opium in 
seven. That it is regaining a hold upon the 
country is not the fault of the educated people, 
but of the military power which, with Japan's 
help, is strangling the nation. It is Japan who 
is smuggling in the drug through Tsingtao which 
they are anxious to hold as their own. The su- 
perstitions which held the common people in 
bondage, preventing the building of railroads, 
the dredging of canals, the opening of mines and 
the introduction of better industrial methods 
have been largely overthrown. The Revolution 
gave idolatry a deadly blow. So many of its 

[221] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

leaders had been educated in Christian schools 
they had no fear of the idols and threw them out 
of the temples when they needed the places for 
barracks or schools. Even before they took this 
step, temples were going into decay and the idols 
were disintegrating into mud and rotten straw. 
Christianity is surely but steadily defeating su- 
perstition. 

The attitude of the literati toward the Chris- 
tian propaganda is most encouraging. Twenty 
years ago they were not idolaters, but atheists 
and agnostics. The Japanese had imported 
much French literature on these subjects and 
had translated it into the Chinese character. The 
Chinese literati had thus become familiar with 
the writings of Voltaire, Huxley and Spencer. 
They had tolerated in others and in themselves 
certain moral delinquencies. Numbers of them 
had two or more wives. This was so common 
that none of them thought of it as a moral ques- 
tion. They gambled and gave wine feasts to each 
other for recreation's sake, forgetting that these 
things might have a moral side. Like the old 
pastor, they thought that "the boys had to sow 
their wild oats before they could settle down and 
be respectable men." So they were tolerant 
toward moral lapses. Christianity came along 
and demanded high moral standards. They 
were willing to cast out their old superstitions, 
but they thought it a little too much to ask them 
to give up their recreations, the only good times 
they could have. Perhaps they did not reason 

[222] 



CHINA'S CALL TO AMERICA 

that far, for most people do not see any harm in 
certain weaknesses common to all humanity. At 
any rate the literati preferred passive agnosti- 
cism to positive Christianity. 

Then the Revolution came along. They 
and their women folk remembered the stories of 
the soldiers of the Taiping days. They knew 
their towns and districts were filled with irre- 
sponsible characters who were willing, upon the 
slightest provocation, to turn robbers and 
looters. Ravaging and the burning of buildings 
always had followed in the wake of their former 
wars. They were faced with their own unpro- 
tected condition, should such scenes be re-en- 
acted in the Revolution. When armies began 
appearing, their terror was pitiable. They ap- 
pealed to the foreign missionaries who lived in 
their midst and found an unsuspected faith and 
courage among the Chinese Christians and un- 
suspected power emanating from the Gospel. It 
brought out in bold relief the weakness of their 
former beliefs or lack of them, and strength of 
the Christian faith as revealed in many 
Chinese Christians. Since then thousands of 
them have enrolled in Bible classes. Others 
have fully accepted Christ. Vei7 little of the 
old antagonism remains. Missionaries have a 
right to be optimistic, to believe that it is in the 
realm of possibility for China to become a Chris- 
tian nation. 

The New China has been criticized for not 
having been able to establish a stable govern- 

[223] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

ment satisfactory to all sections. The country 
is at present divided into a North and a South. 
It is dominated by a military party, or rather 
two parties, who are exploiting the country for 
their own selfish purposes. This is all true, but 
in making such statements we are prone to for- 
get the period of unrest, selfishness and jealous- 
ies which follows most wars. The United 
States did not even elect a president until eight 
years after the surrender of Cornwallis. China 
has much harder problems to solve than had 
the Thirteen Colonies. Geographically she has 
as large a settled land as America has today 
and one with very poor methods of communica- 
tion. She has in addition, the largest population 
of any nation in the world, with the vast majority 
of the people illiterate. Other nations have 
forced international problems upon her which 
are hampering her progress. If other nations 
would show the same unselfish spirit toward her 
which America has shown she would at least be 
given opportunity to prove whether she could 
establish herself among the nations of the 
earth. 

While China holds other nations in distrust, 
her people have implicit confidence in the 
United States. Ever since the Revolution, 
Chinese have been making very definite appeals 
to America for aid in the development of the 
country and the uplift of the people. China 
wants educated young farmers to handle her ex- 
periment farms and agricultural schools. She is 

[224] 



CHINA'S CALL TO AMERICA 

seeking teachers for normal and technical 
schools. Realizing the weakness of the old idea 
that when a pupil enters school he puts behind 
him forever manual labor, China wants men and 
women who will introduce practical industrial 
education. One man went into a rising city in 
Indiana and led educators all over the United 
States to reconsider their former methods. 
What could a group of teachers do if they would 
seize this opportunity and lead China into these 
modern industrial educational methods? 

America has been very busy getting rich, 
gaining culture and education, inventing new 
marvels, writing books, learning better health 
methods: finding ways for enjoying luxurious 
living, recreation, and entertainments. The busi- 
ness men have found plenty to do in developing 
home resources; they saw no reason for taking 
a vital interest in the progress of the rest of the 
world. This was noticeable before the war in 
the way in which our merchant marine was put 
otl the seas. The war brought to the knowledge 
of American leaders the mistake which they 
had made. To that extent, the war was a great 
blessing to the United States. That old pro- 
vincial spirit has been displayed in the way in 
which Congress held up the Treaty of Peace. 
American citizens who, like the missionaries, 
have had their lot cast in a foreign land, wonder 
when American leaders will really get a world 
vision. 

God has made the American nation the rich- 

[225] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

est on the face of the globe, filled her with in- 
ventive genius, supplied her with culture, not to 
the end that her people may merely roll about 
in automobiles and spend their summer vaca- 
tions at famous resorts, or that they may go 
abroad to satisfy a selfish desire for travel and 
sightseeing. God has placed us in a leading 
world position to lead. For us to revel in our 
luxuries and turn deaf ears to the appeals which 
come to our nation from backward peoples of 
the earth, would be fatal. He has placed us in 
this position of responsibility that we may be- 
come the Big Brother of less fortunate. God 
demands that we accept mandatory powers over 
such nations, for He has fitted no other nation 
to do such work as He has prepared America. 

It is said that within three hundred years 
after Christ had ascended. His disciples had 
preached the Gospel in all the then known 
world. Through persecutions they toiled on in 
the great task which He had bequeathed to them. 
Then came recognition and favor from kings and 
princes. Christianity became popular. The 
Church became rich. *'No longer need we say," 
one of the Church leaders is said to have boasted, 
"silver and gold have I none." "That is true," 
some one answered. "But you cannot add as 
Peter then added, "In the name of Jesus Christ, 
walk." The Church forgot its mission and lost 
its power. Mohammed might have become a 
great apostle for Christ. But the Church had 
slept and as it slept men had come and sowed 

[226] 



CHINA'S CALL TO AMERICA 

tares. The tares sprang up and choked the 
true seed. The regions which once were occu- 
pied by the followers of Christ were conquered 
by Mohammed. More than this, the church de- 
generated and filled southern Europe with forms 
and ceremonies which crushed out the spirit of 
the Christ. The religion now left to the people 
there differs little from that found in so-called 
heathen lands. 

In its westward sweep, Christianity was 
propagated by those in whom the Spirit of Christ 
was strongest. Hence it has kept this spirit 
the purest, the most uplifting in its front ranks. 
America is called a Christian nation. Certainly 
the Church of Christ shows great virility in 
Canada and the United States. But Christianity 
has swept on until the Pacific has also been 
spanned. In the last twenty years the number 
of missionaries in China has been trebled and 
the majority of this increase has come from 
America. Certain conditions now in the home- 
land are similar to those formerly present in 
certain European countries when they became 
decadent. The great question is, are we going 
to allow our homeland to share the fate of other 
lands in which Christianity once wrought with 
power? As Christianity becomes stronger in 
Eastern Asia, are its fires to grow dimmer in the 
rear ranks? We cannot believe that the Ameri- 
can people will allow such a fate to come to 
them. We see many indications which show 
that American Christians are awakening to the 

[227] 



CHINA'S CROSSROADS 

real mission of the Church, that the call of God is 
being heard. 

The world war called forth from our Ameri- 
can people latent capacities for adventure, sacri- 
fice and heroism beyond our former imagination. 
Students went forth under the Y. M. C. A. to 
sacrificial work behind the trenches and in the 
prison camps. When the United States entered 
the war they eagerly pressed forward not only 
to officer the ranks of a magically produced army, 
but they were willing to do any kind of work re- 
quired. Entire medical schools formed them- 
selves into hospital units. Women went forth 
and established home comforts and home re- 
treats in the midst of the young soldiers. The 
home people denied themselves food and other 
comforts with undreamed-of willingness. From 
among the highest or the poorest in the land the 
sacrificial and heroic spirit was not found want- 
ing. 

We did this seemingly impossible task. We 
warred for a principle, not against a nation or na- 
tions. We won a victory for that principle, and 
the winning of it placed a greater task upon us 
than that placed by the war itself. With the war 
old things passed away. Shall we still demand 
that the things of the future be molded in the old 
molds, or will we mold anew? We can if we will. 
We showed, during the war, a great spirit of un- 
selfishness. Our future influence and usefulness 
to the world will depend upon our still showing 
forth that same unselfish spirit. God has 

[228] 



CHINA*S CALL TO AMERICA 

placed before our eyes a great vision, a world 
vision. We must enter deeply into fellowship in 
the sufferings of the world. We must be pre- 
pared to make supreme sacrifices for world peace 
and world uplift, if we are to be true to the vision 
we have seen. 



[229] 



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